Possibly irrelevant point: The only way to better ensure your choice of a recruit character-wise [and talent-wise for that matter] is to depend upon your relationship with the recruit's coach or some similar up-close-and-knowledgeable adult who has known the kid for awhile. Notre Dame is a national-wide recruiting team, and it is a little more difficult to establish those long-term relationships when you don't concentrate heavily on just a few deep areas.[For instance, I was told that Virginia Tech never offers anyone from a program that they don't know the coach well]. It's even more difficult when you're changing coaches every few years.
I believe that as long as Kelly has to build relationships with high school coaches in widespread areas of the country, we will see "surprises" in terms of athlete character, personality, dependability. The Alabamas, LSUs, Floridas, USCs don't worry about this, as they just gobble up 5 & 4 stars all over, and if one doesn't fit they insert another. We might have been able to do that with our "aura" and our pipelines in the old days, but now that has to be re-built.
Kelly is correctly not asking for my opinion, but my advice would be to concentrate on a few areas to efficiently build these relationships. He has one ready made one already--Cincinnati, with Moeller, St. X, et al, and that area is loaded with talent. You would think that Chicago would be another "mine". Something must remain of our southern California connections, and we need to establish something in the speed centers of Florida and Georgia.
I think that i've seen in Kelly's current recruiting that he is trying to do exactly this, and even penetrate Texas. But is any football staff large enough to "work" North Carolina, New Jersey, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, etc, etc, etc...?? It would be great if the ND alumni would organize a nation-wide support group which "insinuated" themselves into every HS football program that they could, even when no ND-level athlete was playing there, and "cultivated" the area for any possible recruit who would arise. It would have to be non-ND-affiliated but with our national coverage, especially in the urban Catholic school systems, this "insider" presence might tip the scales in directing more high-quality physical and character athletes towards ND. It is a pipedream I have.