But I've been saying it for 2 years... ND does not prospect, target nor court at a sufficient level in the recruiting process.
Let me start off by saying I appreciate your thoughts. But, I wanted to add some context.
It is simply the sales process.
In a way yes, because it's recruiting. But for Notre Dame it's less about a sales process especially compared to the other blue bloods.
In ND's case, their #1 problem is they don't heat check obvious prospects early enough.
IMO, Notre Dame's biggest problem is that they aren't winning enough and they sell the 40-year decision a little too hard.
People aren't sitting around waiting for ND offers like in the 40's.
THIS is really Notre Dame's biggest "problem" that we've been grappling with for the better part of 25 years.
Catholic Football programs from Chicago, SoCal, Cincy, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philly, Jersey and NY aren't gift wrapping their players for ND any longer.
True, which means having to go outside the traditional comfort zone which is difficult and brings problems.
Even Lou's great teams weren't great because players grew up wanting to play for ND, they were great because of a MASTER salesman in Vinny Cerrato. He filled the roster with talent.
He caught the tail end of that era. There were some monster recruiting classes in the early to mid-80's before Cerrato got started and that was with the Irish being pretty mediocre on the field.
Plus, this was the era of 95 scholarships which made life easier. And, Cerrato had the luxury of being a full-time recruiter.
Probably most telling, even Cerrato had his own troubles. The '91 class had a bunch of guys denied admissions, nearly all of their other top targets chose other schools, the Chicago pipeline was in the early stages of drying up, and ND settled for a bunch of B and C-list names.
Right in the middle of an era of dominance on the field the '91 class foreshadowed all of our troubles. And recruiting, more or less, really hasn't been the same
When you are behind your competition, you have to work harder, you have to see more customers, you have to build more relationships than you competitors. Here is the start of ND's problem. ND isn't Willy Wonka, it can't hand out a few offers to find a Charlie, it has to hand out more than it's competitors, a lot more... but that's NOT what's going on:
This would make sense if Notre Dame didn't have the restrictions to deal with. We're crossing guys off who won't want anything to do with us and/or we know can't make it academically. I'd argue doing your homework and crossing these off the list early is crucial even if it means less offers in the big picture.
Wasting time on kids is a a huge sin in recruiting. It's demoralizing. Could we do a little better with offers? Yeah probably, but that's a general theme with recruiting as a whole. We can always do a little better but doing a little better is incredibly difficult, especially if you're not putting together dominant seasons.
There's only so much time and so many relationships you can cultivate. I don't think a huge increase in offers and chasing kids is necessarily the answer. We're similar to Stanford and we're typically throwing out 30% to 40% more offers. That feels about right.
ND is just late, they don't auto offer young kids who say ND would be a dream offer. They don't auto offer all the Catholic School studs. They don't auto offer kids who have a teammate on the team. They don't auto offer kids who are at schools they have success at. They don't auto offer kids that are in their proven hotbeds.
Like I said, maybe a little bit. But we also know that when a kid says ND is a dream offer it doesn't necessarily mean much. We know being at a Catholic school doesn't mean you're interested in ND (it's not the 40's remember?) and the same goes for any other connections. So many kids are different, even teammates. Grades, parent situation, personalities, all different.
In the end, they are a year late to the party on each of them and what that means is... for a year these players have been saying to themselves (if not hearing it from other recruiters) ND doesn't want me.
It's a Catch-22 oftentimes. Cast a wider net on 2018 kids and you'll get accused of falling behind on the 2017 or 2019 classes. Cast a wider net in general which means eventually working harder on 3-star kids and you'll get accused of misplaced priorities and missing out on the elite players.
In general, I'm pretty leery of the argument that ND needs to beef up its recruiting staff or that's it's overwhelmingly an issue of effort.
We don't need 400 new support staff to tell us not to bother wasting time on 95% of the offers when a 20-man staff could've told you the same thing. Can we do better with the other 5% I think so. But, in recruiting you're always going to be chasing your tail.
Win more games, get a full coaching staff that puts in a quality effort. You can always do a little more but that's the big issues today and a lot of it is self-inflicted and has been easy to fix.
