How we got here: redshirts

[CanadianIrish]

Dude, you are the one trying to cherry pick teams to justify you're nonsense.
I posted just the other day that 15 of 32 Starting QBs were 5 year college players. 26 of 32 were 4 year players. 5th year guys DO play important roles on teams all over the country.

I picked the top five teams in the country (and I was wrong, there is one red shirt senior). Where did you come up with 32 teams? Did you just pick 32 random teams?

Of the top 30 QBs in the country in passer rating, 7 are fifth year seniors and almost all of them play for small programs. I'm too lazy too look at WRs and RBs, but they are far more rare.

 

[jonesman]

Aaron B,
You express concerns over taking a full class of kids each year. You think that we will not leave enough spots for the following year. Well, I say that you need to look a little deeper into this. ND will always have attrition with each class for various reasons. Given this attrition, we will have plenty of room. Here is a snapshot of the last 5 classes. You will see that what we lost in those 5 years is the equivalent of a FULL recruiting class.

2006:
Will Yeatman - transfer because of trouble on campus
Bartley Webb - Medical, ended career
Luke Schmidt - Medical, concussion issue
Munir Prince - transfer, position change
Matt Carufel - transfer, compeition on OL
Zack Frazer - transfer, QB comp
Demetrius Jones - tranfer, wanted to play LB. kidding.
Konrad Rueland - transfer, could not beat out Rudolph
Wenger - medical, concussions this year.
Jashad Gaines - transfer, academics

2007:
Jimmy Clausen - NFL, left early
Golden Tate - NFL, left early
Aaron Nagel - transfer, buried on depth chart
Steve Paskorz - medical, career done

2008:
Joe Fauria - transfer, campus trouble
*this class could lose Rudolph and Floyd both to the NFL after this year. Plus, all kinds of RUMORS about Crist.

2009:
Shaq Evans - transfer, homesick
EJ Banks - academics, might be back on team

2010:
Matt James - terrible accident
Chris Badger - Mission, will he return and when?
Spencer Boyd - transfer, academics
Derek Roback - transfer, wants to play QB

So, you are looking at a loss of over 20 kids from the last 5 years. That is an average of 4 kids a class. If you think that is going to change in the future, you are mistaken. Some years will be better, some will be worse. Injuries can never be predicted. Unhappiness due to playing time happens on every roster in college football. Issues with academics will always play into the team at ND, we don't just give kids a pass. Finally, these are teenagers at college, there will always be some issues.

My conclusion is that we must FILL the roster every year. The cream will rise and those that can't handle competition in the depth chart will move on. I will say that CW hurt us with the fact he was very selective in his scholarship offerings. He missed on some elite defensive line players and had no back-ups. We should have been signing multiple guys per year. ONE d-lineman a year does not cut the mustard.

 

[aaronb]

I picked the top five teams in the country (and I was wrong, there is one red shirt senior). Where did you come up with 32 teams? Did you just pick 32 random teams?

Of the top 30 QBs in the country in passer rating, 7 are fifth year seniors and almost all of them play for small programs. I'm too lazy too look at WRs and RBs, but they are far more rare.

I was talking about the Starting QB's on NFL teams. And the backgrounds they come from.

You will see less 5th year guys starting on the top level FBS teams. The reason for that is that those teams over recruit in major ways. If a kid isn't starting by year 3, then that kid is usually blown out of the program.

For an honest look over the FULL LANDSCAPE of CFB. You need to look at the mid and lower tiered teams. That is where guys from the Florida's and Alabama end up once they leave there (Cam Newton for instance).

 

[aaronb]

Aaron B,
You express concerns over taking a full class of kids each year. You think that we will not leave enough spots for the following year. Well, I say that you need to look a little deeper into this. ND will always have attrition with each class for various reasons. Given this attrition, we will have plenty of room. Here is a snapshot of the last 5 classes. You will see that what we lost in those 5 years is the equivalent of a FULL recruiting class.

2006:
Will Yeatman - transfer because of trouble on campus
Bartley Webb - Medical, ended career
Luke Schmidt - Medical, concussion issue
Munir Prince - transfer, position change
Matt Carufel - transfer, compeition on OL
Zack Frazer - transfer, QB comp
Demetrius Jones - tranfer, wanted to play LB. kidding.
Konrad Rueland - transfer, could not beat out Rudolph
Wenger - medical, concussions this year.
Jashad Gaines - transfer, academics

2007:
Jimmy Clausen - NFL, left early
Golden Tate - NFL, left early
Aaron Nagel - transfer, buried on depth chart
Steve Paskorz - medical, career done

2008:
Joe Fauria - transfer, campus trouble
*this class could lose Rudolph and Floyd both to the NFL after this year. Plus, all kinds of RUMORS about Crist.

2009:
Shaq Evans - transfer, homesick
EJ Banks - academics, might be back on team

2010:
Matt James - terrible accident
Chris Badger - Mission, will he return and when?
Spencer Boyd - transfer, academics
Derek Roback - transfer, wants to play QB

So, you are looking at a loss of over 20 kids from the last 5 years. That is an average of 4 kids a class. If you think that is going to change in the future, you are mistaken. Some years will be better, some will be worse. Injuries can never be predicted. Unhappiness due to playing time happens on every roster in college football. Issues with academics will always play into the team at ND, we don't just give kids a pass. Finally, these are teenagers at college, there will always be some issues.

My conclusion is that we must FILL the roster every year. The cream will rise and those that can't handle competition in the depth chart will move on. I will say that CW hurt us with the fact he was very selective in his scholarship offerings. He missed on some elite defensive line players and had no back-ups. We should have been signing multiple guys per year. ONE d-lineman a year does not cut the mustard.

I fully understand what you are saying. There is bound to be attrition from every class at every school. However the list would look the same if we started taking 25 every class just the same. Just alot longer.

I'm not saying that we NEVER take more than 20 kids. I'm just saying that NOTRE DAME could lose athletic pull with athletes and ESPECIALLY their families if we start over recruiting and blowing 10 kids a year out of here.

We surely won't be seeing any more 96% graduation rates.

 

[Jerry]

This really helps explain to me what happened to Notre Dame versus Stanford this year. I knew ND was just learning their new schemes on both sides of the ball and were thin on depth at some of the power positions. But still for the life of me couldn't understand why a more talented ND team was physically pushed around by Stanford all afternoon. Seeing that Stanford has 9 - 4th and 5th year Seniors compared to ND's 4 explains a lot of this to me.

 

[jonesman]

Aaron,
So, are you saying we should take less than a full roster of kids each year???? What are you smoking. This is how ND has gotten itself in the hole at certain positions. CW took classes over 20 kids two out of his 5 years. In 2006 and 2008, he took 20+. The other years he took 17 and 18 kids. Those spots he did not fill were DL and DB which are both haunting us to no end today.

So, what is your suggestion??

 

[IrishinSyria]

Aaron,
So, are you saying we should take less than a full roster of kids each year???? What are you smoking. This is how ND has gotten itself in the hole at certain positions. CW took classes over 20 kids two out of his 5 years. In 2006 and 2008, he took 20+. The other years he took 17 and 18 kids. Those spots he did not fill were DL and DB which are both haunting us to no end today.

So, what is your suggestion??

We fill the scholarships we have. Not doing so would be crazy, but over-enrolling kids would be equally crazy. I guess the only advantage ND has is that it's under no obligation to bring back 5th years, as everybody should graduate by year 4. Depth wise we should be ok, the problem was less with Weis' recruits then with the fact that they had to play right away because of the small sizes of Ty's classes.

 

[aaronb]

We fill the scholarships we have. Not doing so would be crazy, but over-enrolling kids would be equally crazy. I guess the only advantage ND has is that it's under no obligation to bring back 5th years, as everybody should graduate by year 4. Depth wise we should be ok, the problem was less with Weis' recruits then with the fact that they had to play right away because of the small sizes of Ty's classes.

Exactly!

I'm not saying we need to not fill the 85 schollie limit. I just don't think we need to follow the SEC path of "oversigning". Doing that will undermine our athletic credibility and erode away the best recruiting advantage this program has.