Le Freak:  Freak Out!

So who are we to believe?  I’m going with the Recruiting Coordinator.  Your choice is yours and yours alone.

Coach Ianello talked about recruiting this week, and his message was definitely Don’t Freak Out about ND’s current lack of verbally committed recruits for this year’s class.

 “Don’t be concerned, because we’re not concerned,” he said when asked what he would tell the worried fans. “Don’t be concerned, because they’ll have plenty to talk about as we go through the summer, okay?

“I feel good about where we are. We have a plan…and we’re working that plan, and we’re confident that the plan is going to pay the dividends that we’ve all been accustomed to around here.”

One thing we know about Charlie and his recruiting army – they have a plan, and they’re sticking to it.  Given the phenomenal success over the past 2 years, it’s tough to argue with it.

There are a few reasons I can think of that may help explain why the Irish are slower out of the gates this year.

The first is last year’s on-field performance.  Duh.  Kids are going to hang out a bit more this year I think, wait and see how the class develops and how ND looks on the field.  I think that makes sense, and frankly it’s fair. 

Second, ND doesn’t have those few ’studs in the stable’, those couple hardcore ND guys that are super star players (think Cave, Crist) that signed on early and became ambassadors for the class.  Well, we don’t have them yet.  Those kinds of players are the ones that get the ball rolling, and ND needs to get those first few in the door, and then momentum will take over.  Momentum is huge as kids feel the competition for slots, and can feel the demand for those positions.  And I’m sure Charlie, Rob and crew are doing now – trying to bring in the rainmakers.

Another aspect of it is the ban on Head Coaches traveling to recruit in May.  This is known as the “Ty Wants to Golf More Rule”, and it sucks for ND.  Why do I say that, when it applies to all coaches?  Because it disproportionately hurts very hard-working coaches, that would have really put in the time and effort recruiting during that month.  And that very small group includes Charlie.  C-dub did crazy things on the road last year, and the lack of having that time certainly hurts.  Ianello agrees:

“Obviously, Charlie works really hard at recruiting, and him being on the road was an extremely large positive for us,” said Ianello. “It’s disappointing that that (travel) rule got passed. It kind of snuck up on us. In my role with the AFCA, we had discussed this head coach on the road, off the road, for several years and it never had any legs.”

The final reason could be that Charlie and company can no longer sell the ‘get on the field right now’ pitch across the board.  Sure, at some positions, there’s still that opportunity.  But after the success of this past year (and the prior 2 years to a certain extent, but not as much), kids know that ND has talent.  Now, talent breeds talent and competition and all that.  Yes.  That’s great.  But as the stables fill up with top tier athletes, it gets harder and harder to sell the ’play now’ aspect.  I think we can still say it in certain positions with less depth and athleticism this year, but not as much as last year.  And next year that pitch is dead in the water. 

 A final note.  I personally don’t think the Text Messaging ban should have much of an effect.  Despite what Coach Ianello says, I am guessing the ND coaches don’t agree.  So coaches, listen up.  It’s really easy to get around this text messaging rule, and here’s how:  email.  Get a blackberry or an iphone with an email account hooked up.  Then, option 1: Send an email to the kid’s email address, from your blackberry.   Option 2:  Send an email to the kid’s cell phone.  All of the services attached email addresses to a phone number. For example with Verizon, it’s 12345678910@vtext.com.  You fire off an email to that address, and it’s routed through as an email (but looks like a text!) to the phone’s inbox.  Magic.

Neither of these falls under the definition of text messaging, yet they have the same effect (especially the second one).  So get to it.  (NOTE:  I haven’t taken the time to read the actual rule so they may have addressed this aspect.  But given the NCAA’s bass-ackwards way of doing things, I highly doubt it.)

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