Last year after losing the “Littles” at the last hour, Charlie said he’d be re-evaluating the way he looked at recruiting verbal commitments.  No longer would ND honor ’soft’ or ’silent’ verbals.  It was very cut and dry, black and white, clear-cut.  You’re either in, or you’re out.  Some people had a problem with it.  But, obviously, this strategy resonated with players as well, given our current #1 haul. 

Irish Eyes’ Mike Frank got a few great quotes from Charlie on this topic recently:

“I took a pretty big backlash last season when I said we were really going to get down to the word commitment and give them a clear explanation of what a commitment was, and I think that the guys that we’ve gone after have all understood that right from day one, what our stance was,“ Weis said, who had a few commits switch to other schools last year on National Signing Day. “And we’ve supported them and they’ve supported us and their families have been involved and their coaches have been involved and everyone has clearly understood that this was the way we were going to do it.

So Charlie changed the word, but he also changed the way he went after recruits.  He laid things on the line, developed those relationships, and he got the kids to commit to other members of the class.  He went after those all-around student-athletes that fit best at ND, but he didn’t lower standards in terms of on-field performance and upside.  He also did his best to get the kids recruiting one another - to make them a true class, a cohort, a group of friends NOW, rather than waiting for the kids to create those relationships on their own once they get to campus. 

“And I think that because when you recruit a bunch of high character kids that all are involved with all the other kids that you’re recruiting, they do it themselves. I think they’ve already kind of bought into that. That’s the way they’d like it to be done. Really it makes it a lot easier when the players are recruiting themselves. I mean, they’ve already got relationships going. They can’t back out on their friends. They’re already close with a whole bunch of these guys.”

And if anything, these early friendships will only help the team gel more in the future, help create that cohesion and sense of camaraderie that’s so important in this game.  Hopefully all of these steps will lead to zero defections this year.  Given Charlie’s tireless work in this area, and the high character of the kids in this class, I expect just that.

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