Notre Dame's Recruiting Class and Why It's Not that Good

For a 3^rd straight recruiting season, Charlie Weis and the Notre Dame Football program have brought in another highly touted class of high school seniors. ESPN says that they have 10 of ESPN's top 150 high school prospects scheduled to play for them next season, including the #2-quarterback prospect in the nation, Dayne Christ from California.

I say bologna!

Where are the recruits from the previous seasons that were supposed to be so good? This past season was the year that we were supposed to see the fruits of Weis's hard recruiting labor, and frankly, that was about as dismal of a football season as I have seen a major program go through in quite some time.

So my question is how can Notre Dame continue to have all of these highly regarded prospects that aren't turning into stars on the college football field? I understand that predicting a kid's football ceiling is about as accurate as shooting craps, but if you keep getting enough 4 and 5 star recruits, as everyone alleges Notre Dame has, then eventually the numbers would be in favor of having a 4 or 5 star product on the field.

But that's just not happening in South Bend. Their 3-9 record in 2007 is evidence of that.

So the answer to my question is that these so-called "5-star recruits" actually aren't that good. It is just that when a player who has been teetering on that average/above average line by recruiters then gets signed by a big name school like Notre Dame, the recruiters, in reactionary fashion, boost that recruit up the rankings.

The other theory is that when you have a player that has been a great player in his state and local surroundings but who isn't really at the highest of talent levels nationally, his name can become larger than life in that area, and then he is touted around the country as one of the state's top prospects. However, when other big name schools travel from across the country to see this kid or look at his playing tape, they realize he is not the prospect they had hoped for. Now this kid has been turned down by a few of the big name schools, so when a somewhat despondent program like Notre Dame comes in to recruit him, you have two kind of desperate entities in need of one another. So the kid signs with Notre Dame and maintains his 5-star status, and Notre Dame can boast another top 150 prospect.

Those two scenarios are some of the few ways that you can explain how Notre Dame has had highly ranked class after highly ranked class with Charlie Weis, while yet none of his prospects have paid dividends on the field. His first full-recruiting class will be juniors this season. So maybe Weis can prove me and everyone else wrong in 2008. But let's just remember, that same class was starting last year, and their woes weren't an issue of experience, they were an issue of faculty.