Want a Gold Star? Here’s a Gold Star! We’ve Got Plenty O’Them.

I decided to take a look at how the "measurables" of the 2008 Notre Dame Football Recruiting Class stack up against history. So I took a look at Rivals.com data (they had the easiest to use/grok tables) for each class since 2002. You can see the results of my copying, pasting, and statistical analysis that would make my old stats professor cry if he were capable of emotion (he's not), in the spread sheets below.

Note: I assigned positions to players if they had been recruited as "athletes." Otherwise, I didn't change their recruited positions, so if they were listed as "WR," but ended up as a CB at ND, I didn't change that. I also didn't eliminate players who transferred or somehow never ended up playing for Notre Dame. I did, however, eliminate kickers from this "analysis," because, well, they're kickers.

Just skimming through the data, you'll notice immediately that the bulk of the "quality" ratings, as assigned by Rivals.com in star form to the class of 2008, are weighted much further to the coveted 5 stars than the dreaded 1 star. And the average star-rating of this class (3.96) is the highest average rating of any Notre Dame recruiting class from 2002 to present. The 3.96 average of 2008 is also more than a full star better than the average of the 2004 class (2.75), otherwise known as "the trough."

You may also notice that of the 7 "5-star" recruits who have signed with Notre Dame since 2002, 3 of them, or 42%, belong to the class of 2008. But that's not all. You may pass that little stat off saying something like, "yeah, but domer.mq, those 5-stars are rare for any program!" Well, how about 4-stars? Sure, they're still the elite recruits, but not quite as rare, playing silver to the 5-star's gold. From 2002 to 2008, Notre Dame has signed 60 total 4 star recruits. In 2008, Notre Dame signed 16 4-star recruits, or about 27% of all 4-star recruits in the last 8 classes. A little disproportionate, don't ya think? Of seven recruiting classes from 2002 to 2008, the 2008 class accounts for 28% of all of the 4 and 5 star recruits signed to Notre Dame.

Portion of 4 and 5 star recruits signed to ND - 2002-2008

But the class of 2008 isn't just highly touted. They're also just plain high, or, um, tall. In fact, averaging a height of 75.35 inches, this is the tallest class since the 2002 class to sign with ND (75.78). That may seem trivial, but football is an extremely vertical game, and besides, I'm really sick of seeing the Irish on the field with the likes of LSU, SoCal, or Ohio State (the elite) and looking like boys among men. There has been a marked difference between the physical composition of Notre Dame squads of the recent past compared with the elite programs, but the class of 2008 is a major step in eliminating that problem. Now if we could just get a real training table in the dining halls!

Another problem for Notre Dame, at least according to the pundits who get paid to know such things (now there's a sign of trouble for the economy), is speed. Now, the 2008 class is not the fastest class in this set by class average, but they're not slow by any means, with reported 40-times for the wide receivers, the "tall" (read: potentially big) receivers, averaging in at 4.49 seconds.

One thing I keep reading from "experts" who want to somehow devalue this class is that Notre Dame recruits get some sort of rating boost by virtue of being Notre Dame recruits. Well, if that were true, what the heck happened in 2004 when ND signed 8 3-star and 6 2-star recruits. Was this "bonus" somehow, miraculously, not in effect that year? Or was it in effect and ND really signed 8 2-star and 6 1-star recruits? Charlie Weis hasn't signed a 2-star, non-kicker recruit since his "first" class of 2005, which, frankly, I don't consider his class so much as I consider it a "transition" class. Is this perceived "bonus" a function of Weis' recruiting? Is it really the "Charlie Weis Bonus?" You can't have it both ways. You can't argue that ND has always had a lot of talent, but then argue that the talent isn't really as good as advertised.

I wrote earlier this week that there are 1, maybe 2 generations of ND fans that haven't known an Irish squad with this sort of talent. They also haven't really known an Irish squad to be dominant, and I think that's really unfortunate. I can replay individual telecasts of games from 1987-1993 in my head, the memories are so richly detailed. I look forward to the younger generations getting some memories like that. I look forward to the younger generations really getting "it." And I look forward to this remarkable class enabling that.