Coach Brian Kelly wanted the focus to be on the 16 players who signed, rather than the one (5-star WR Deontay Greenberry) who didn't. "I used to have a saying about players like that and that was I'd rather play against him for four games than with him for four years," he told UND.com.

If you follow the link, you will see that this isn't an excerpt from an article, the above is the whole post. While I understand that the author of this "Rapid Report", Mark Bradford, was simply attempting to provide the equivalent of an audio soundbite, this comment was not only taken horribly out of context, but the quote itself wasn't Kelly's complete sentence; in fact, the so called quote didn't even come out of Kelly's mouth as it was written by Mr.Bradford.

I had been inquiring on where I could find this interview as it was missing on UND.com's overview on there excellent signing day coverage. Thankfully, it was just a simple oversight, so now I have the interview in it's entirety to back my comments up.

To provide this context, here is the complete context of this so-called "shot" that occurs around the 1:40 mark:

Jack Nolan: And you've already discovered this and I've learned over thirty years: if you come here you have to want to be here. If you don't want to be all-in here, it's not going to work. So better off to find out on February 1st than November 15th.

Brian Kelly: Yeah because it's just going to take too much time and effort. You know, kid comes here and it's really not the right fit. You know, those aren't going to be good times with a player. You know, I used to have a saying when we were recruiting regionally, you know, on a kid and we were making a decision: I'd rather play against him four times than have to have him with us four years if he's not the right kind of fit. So, again, let's think about the sixteen guys that understood Notre Dame and what we're about and let's talk about them as it relates to this class.

Kelly was responding to a question and gave a generic anecdote based on his previous recruiting experience, not taking a shot at Greenberry. In fact, throughout the beginning of that interview, Kelly made it clear he had no issue with Greenberry. When asked directly about him, Kelly had this to say immediately before the quoted text above:

Kelly: And talking about those sixteen, it's important that we don't lose focus on their day and the exciting day that they had. The one that did not, obviously, when you talk about Notre Dame, those weren't the right things for him. And that's fine, we have no problem with it. We want the right kind of guys. And, you know, Notre Dame, has great and unique distinctions and those have to be seen as being important in your life. And so the sixteen guys that chose us saw how important those things are in their life at Notre Dame and that's why it's an exciting day for us.

Kelly again repeated his mantra of wanting the RKGs at Notre Dame, completely consistent with his comments on recruiting since he's been here. He made it clear that he harbored no ill-will at all towards Greenberry.

Now, we can be free to debate on whether or not Kelly needs to be more aware of the microscope he is under as head coach of Notre Dame. Everyone is always hungry from a soundbite from our coach and it isn't just Notre Dame fans that are ready to consume it--this partial quote went viral just minutes after it was posted.

Attempting to paint a picture of an angry Kelly taking a shot at a recruit is hardly genuine and CBSSports.com took his words completely out of context. I'm sure they have no problem with it though, as such sensationalist fiction will surely rack up far more hits than this post containing the truth will.

And by now you also know that Mariotti is hardly done with this world any more than Satan is. He's bound to pop up somewhere. That's just a fact of life, like the inevitable recurrence of certain STDs.

Indeed, despite rumors, it seems Mariotti intends to move on to some other, livelier medium. And I hope he finds it. I hope he finds it and that he finds it impossible to survive. Because the livelier medium is filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of people who do "it" better than Mariotti could ever hope, and most of them do it for free.

So here's to Mariotti moving on, not just from the printed press, but from the keyboard altogether. And let's hope that he takes his buddies Hamilton, O'Connor, and Zemek with him.

At any rate, El Kabong of NDNation.com has written up some thoughts on the entire matter, and here's the summary of his point:

Some people are acting like this is all Brian Hamilton's fault and if he wouldn't have written the story, it'd all be fine. That's not the case. BH bears some of the blame for writing a non-story, but an equal part of the problem is the public jones for stories like this. BH could leave the Tribune tomorrow, and we'd still see these kinds of stories. The only way to truly combat them is to not read them and let people know they're not necessary.

And on the face of it, that seems like a reasonable argument. In essence, El Kabong is saying, "fight the disease, not the symptom." He argues that Hamilton feels he has to write these sorts of pieces because if he doesn't, someone else will, and this is the sort of thing "the public" craves.

But what El Kabong (who, by the way, I respect quite a bit) and the editors of the Chicago Tribune (who, as you might have guessed, I do not) are failing to grasp is that news media, as the Tribune would argue itself to be, and sites like TheBigLead.com, which originally posted the photos of ND football players at a party and apparently have people like Hamilton feeling mighty threatened, aren't even in the same industry. So why does the Tribune feel it needs to compete with blogs? Because their ad revenue numbers are down? So what? That doesn't mean that a company that wants to represent itself as a news source gets to also play in the muddy waters of gossip and speculation in which blogs like TBL (and HLS) roll around. By what proclamation does the newspaper industry have a right to revenue that never shrinks? If the public's craving for news has dropped while its craving for gossip increases, that's just too bad for the Tribune. Either they must completely abandon any sense of being a reputable news source, or get accustomed to watching the gossip game from the sidelines while operating on a set of more limited resources. That's the Tribune's burden to bear, and it's certainly no excuse for the Tribune to manufacture news. Sure, it's only sports, but I can't help but wonder where else in the paper the editors feel it's okay to speculate and represent gossip as news as well. Further, how is it that news outlets have identified blogs as the threat to their revenue source? Have they looked at novels, comic books, or poetry readings? Those all seem to involve the written word in some fashion, and as near as I can tell, that's the only commonality between blogs and news sources. Perhaps the Tribune could create a new section: "Fiction." They already seem to have a knack for it. Or maybe they could create a comic book and sell the story to a major movie studio - lots of revenue to be had there. Or maybe they could publish more poetry. One particular piece comes to mind.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Essentially, the phrase (bold is mine):

For the second time in a year, Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen may have to explain his alleged participation in a situation involving alcohol.

...written by Hamilton has been transformed on Philly.com to...

The Chicago Tribune reported that Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen and at least two other teammates are being investigated by the university for possible violations of the school's conduct code.

And that, kids, essentially sums up what pisses me off so much about the behavior of Brian Hamilton and the Chicago Tribune editorial staff. They've managed to make themselves the Pre-Crime unit of sports media. Use enough of the terms "may," and "could," and "might," and the Tribune can say just about anything about anyone, knowing full well that their voice will be heard, but the words will likely be misconstrued until the readers read and the listeners hear the fantastical claims that they really want to make because the more fantastical the story, the more money from ad revenue.

And hey, who can blame the Tribune for making the development of revenue a priority over the pursuit and accurate reporting of news? After all, have you noticed how the Chicago Tribune is essentially dead? At this point, any desperate attempts by Brian Hamilton and the Chicago Tribune editors to keep their jobs are less death throes and more involuntary, postmortem releases of gas.

But then Brian Hamilton of the Chicago Tribune picked up on the story, as he often does after surfing the internet looking for stories to serve as "inspiration," and turned it into a post headlined: Could ND players be in hot water over pics?

Brian, a graduate of Northwestern University, apparently thought it was news-worthy to mention that these football players in these undated photos may have been drinking beer! Yes, beer! In college! At a party! At Notre Dame! My God!

This, of course, leads us to a question we keep asking ourselves about Brian: Has Brian Hamilton, the Notre Dame beat writer for the Chicago Tribune, ever actually stepped foot on ND's campus? The place reeks of beer. That smell in the air every 3rd day? That's not an "ethanol plant." What a ridiculous notion. If there were really a plant producing that much ethanol, oil would be about 3 bucks a barrel. That smell is just vapors from all the spilled beer in the dorm carpeting.

We haven't gotten any comments from Brian on why he chose to attend Northwestern over, say, Bob Jones or Wheaton. And, frankly, we feel about as motivated to actually reach him as Brian feels compelled to cover his beat with any semblance of competence.

From ESPN's Team Preview of Notre Dame (done in conjunction with Blue Ribbon College Football Yearbook):

Not only, however, was there a thought, there was an entire thought process, which Weis described in detail on Feb. 8, nine days after hiring Jon Tenuta as an assistant head coach in charge of the defense, a move that demoted former assistant head coach Bill Smith to the athletics community relations staff.

To summarize, Weis said he knew something had to be done to his defense, and once he decided it had to come at the expense of Smith, he wanted to hire another veteran coach to replace Smith and work with defensive coordinator Corwin Brown. Once he settled on Tenuta, it was a matter of making sure Brown was comfortable with his decision.

"The No. 1 thing I wanted to do was make sure that we had an idea guy," Weis said of his conversations with Brown. "I told Corwin, 'As long as you're the defensive coordinator, you're always running the defense, you're always calling the defense.' "

Although it didn't go down in the smoothest way possible for Weis, which has been a theme of his tenure with the Fighting Irish, he appears to have landed a good coach in Tenuta, whose last job was as Georgia Tech's defensive coordinator.

What. The. Hell?

Demotion of Bill Smith? Who the hell is Bill Smith? Tenuta was hired as assistant head coach, defense, after former assistant Bill Lews had double-hip-replacement surgery. Maybe that's how ESPN avoids a libel suit from Bill Lewis; they call him Bill Smith.

So while Zemek is busy blasting ND for hurting America and losing its Catholic Identity, he's also busy marketing a credit card in the midst of one of the worst credit crisis this nation has ever seen, and a website called "NaughtyOrNice.com," a matchmaking service that, apparently, is for those who want their sex without all those nasty entanglements like marriage, or, at the very least, commitment, and a video game system that's helping our already obese society get even sicker while we, as a nation, are in the middle of a health care crisis. I'm surprised there isn't an advertisement for lawyers who can get dads out of paying child support somewhere on the site. Maybe if I refreshed, there would be a new set of marketing promotions designed to help Zemek with his own Catholic identity or Americans with their morality.

Zemek continues his must-be-drunken rant with doozies like this:

I thought Notre Dame football's biggest problem all these years was its lack of fidelity to Catholicism. Turns out that the program's biggest problem was really its use of business methods that have hurt, are hurting, and--if unchecked--will continue to hurt America.

Right. Because "America," which ND is apparently hurting, is bigger than, "Catholicism," don't ya know? This must be true, as Zemek, moral arbiter of Scout.com, spent the first part of his rant establishing that he's a Catholic, so it must be true.

There's a bunch of other stuff I could pick apart, like his complete lack of understanding of how a "free market," actually works, or how investments, like, say, the purchasing of exclusive television rights to ND home games, are made based on forecasting of future performance rather than as a reward for the past. Zemek probably poured all of his money into Wang computers and still thinks it was a great buy. Never mind that after this entire diatribe, Zemek never once points out what team that isn't already contractually obligated to a television deal via conference affiliation would be more "deserving" of NBC's investment. I dunno, maybe he had Army in mind.

Anyway, let's all hope Zemek sleeps well at night, making "money in a sound manner, with integrity and honor." You know, with those internet banner ads to credit companies and find-sex-now websites that display while he baits people to read his "work."

I was visiting with Brother Bernard, the Enclave’s archivist, the other night and beneath the full, silvery moon, with the sound of his rare, red piglets squealing in the background, Brother Bernard passed on to me a rare and unsettling manuscript.  For centuries the Enclave has gathered every piece of writing in existence.  Not just work that has been published, mind you, but copies of every scrap and doodle on earth are gathered, catalogued, and archived by Brother Bernard’s minions.

It was with trembling hands that the good Brother handed me this work, and I share it with you now, previously lost to the ages, only so that you may understand the devastating power of the written word, the vastly overrated goodness of abbreviations, and the importance of a good editor.

OMG, IMO Gators’ Meyer so Hott I May G in my P’s

His name is etched in the anals (sic) of history.

Urban Meyer is so hot that he can roast an entire turkey by merely pinching his nuts together and yawning on the fowl.  It doesn’t even have to be thawed...

The list continues for one hundred-and-three pages after that, makes some rather dubious claims about a football coach’s abilities and sexual proclivities, and concludes abruptly with the sentence: “Only I could make you truly happy, Urban.”

The piece has no author listed, but is written entirely on Orlando Sentinel stationary and is heavily perfumed with Calvin Klein’s “CKIN2U” Cologne.  Which is delicious.

Let us read and heed.  Warnings abound in such work, and the would-be columnist wallows in superlatives like a pig rolling in its neighbor’s shit.

Let us pray for lost souls, and let us pray for gout unto those who worship false idols.

H’amen.

But, Mike, seriously, you can't call out Tim Brown for his 'poor' stock picks one freaking week after he picked them!  That's just not how the analysis of financial instruments works.  Ever read "Random Walk"?  No?  Shocking. 

I know you like to cover any and everything ND, and Tim Brown's foray into picking stocks is kind of a fun story.  But please, please please leave the commentary on the quality of those stock picks to people who actually know a tiny little bit about stock valuation, PE ratios, DCF, etc.  Because 1) It's unfair to Tim and 2) It makes you look a bit foolish.

So just a public service announcement so folks don't necessarily write Mr. Brown off this early.  Maybe he's great, maybe he's terrible.  But one week means nothing.

PS - Your assertion that it's harder to make money on stocks in a poor economy shows just how much you have to learn.  You may want to hit up Mr. Brown and get some lessons on Shorts, Straddles and general Value strategy.

PPS - Yes, I'm a finance nerd. 

In covering the news about Tenuta joining the Irish, he said (and I urge you not to click on that link)...

What, exactly, does "assistant head coach/defense" mean -- especially for Irish defensive coordinator Corwin Brown, whom Weis lauded at every turn in 2007? We'll see. At minimum, it means that the defense's performance in '07 still wasn't good enough in Weis' eyes, however effusive his praise of Brown was. Given Tenuta's credentials, consider the fire under Brown officially lit.

Moron.

Let's see, "What, exactly, does 'assistant head coach/defense' mean?" Um, Brian, you've been the beat writer for Notre Dame for a full season. Did you not bother to notice that the guy Jon Tenuta is replacing, Bill Lewis, had the job title, "Assistant Head Coach/Defense?"

Here's some visual proof in case they change his title by the time you check that link...

Dear Lord, if all of humanity knew as little about their jobs and researched as little as Brian apparently does, we'd all still be convinced that leeching is an excellent treatment for mental illness.

There is no fire lit under Corwin Brown. Charlie Weis saw a great opportunity and grabbed a great football coach while he was available. Why? Because Charlie Weis is good at his job. Brian Hamilton is not.