No, I don’t mean it in that ‘we are scrimmaging ourselves and so we have to win’ joke kind of way. Okay, maybe partially.
But after the Blue-Gold game on a beautiful 75 degree day in sunny South Bend, it’s hard not to walk away with that kind of a headline. ND won in almost every way today. Special thanks to our on-the-street field guy the K-Man of Cleveland, OH for the reporting.
First, attendance. The game is getting to be a huge annual event, and this year shattered the previous attendance record with just shy of 52,000 people attending. 52,000!!! That’s 50,000 more than an Illinois Spring Game draws. That’s over 25 times more than an Illini game draws. If you had 26 Illinois Spring Games, you would just barely match the attendance of one ND Spring Game. That’s badass. I love the Irish faithful and I love Charlie for transforming this game into a bigger event and therefore a bigger draw. That kind of attendance is a big win for the university and the program.
ND also won in recruiting today. With one stellar commitment in Darius Fleming (see below) and a “who’s who of High School All-Americans” on-hand, according to Tom Lemming, it’s tough to say this wasn’t a great day for recruiting. Top players from across the country attended a scrimmage that drew 52,000 fans, on a warm and sunny spring day when ND’s campus is at its best. With all the hype and the recent commits on both sides of the ball, this was a great day for the future of Irish football.
The play, from all reports, was conservative, which was expected. Each QB only threw a few passes, there were a lot of sacks, and a ton of running plays. There were 2 trick-plays thrown in there, one a halfback pass that was dropped and a little flea flicker action that was batted down by a CB (yay defense!).
Our reporter K-man’s opinion was that Jimmy Clausen looked the most comfortable under center, and that Demetrius and Frazer looked decidedly uncomfortable. Take one man’s opinion on ‘comfort level’ with a grain of salt, but it’s pretty telling that he felt the other two big QB recruits didn’t even look comfortable let alone efficient or good. Jimmy has a lot of hype around him, but at the least we know he’s one of the best prepared freshmen to enter a competition like this in a while with all of his personal training, etc. It will be great to get more information on the details of his play, but it sounds like he’s the leading candidate.
Junior Jabbie was reportedly a workhorse today, and may have opened some eyes to his potential in the backfield as well. Other than that, reports are that the Irish didn’t show much at all, but given Charlie’s love of secrecy, that’s not surprising. Since no secrets were revealed, I’d say the Irish won here too! Yay, we win!
The only not-so-great note on the day was John Sullivan’s apparent knee injury during play. We have no idea how serious it was, or if it was definitely the knee, but it’s not a good sign when a guy goes down in a scrimmage. And especially when it’s your most experienced player on a line that is relatively inexperienced and has almost no depth. We’re hoping that it’s nothing big and that John makes a full recovery in time for summer conditioning.
Overall, the B-G Game sounds like it was a great success in terms of hype, attendance, recruiting and secrecy. We’ll need to wait and see how the QB’s develop, and what the result is from Charlie’s point of view in terms of the play.
Go Irish.
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