from ESPN's Ivan Maisel: Weis Fixed On The Prize He may be loud and he may be big, but even Charlie Weis can be inconspicuous. On the night that Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn did not win the Heisman Trophy, the Fighting Irish coach stood behind a pillar at the far end of the lobby outside the Nokia Theater. If you came down the stairs into the lobby and craned your neck to the left, you might have seen Weis, which is how he liked it. When public figures like Weis are in a public setting -- that is, one they don't control, complete with civilians -- they lurk on the edge of it. To dive in would be to surrender their time and their shield. Speaking of which, I can remember being in South Bend some years ago for a banquet at which then-coach Lou Holtz would speak. He stood in the second-floor lobby of the athletic building, self-pinned against a trophy case, sipping a diet Coke and girding himself to go on stage. So Weis is off to one side, and I walk up and re-introduce myself and congratulate him on going 10-2. And here, from memory, is what he said: "Listen, it's a polite thing to say, and politically correct, but if I'm happy with a 10-2 record, I'm going to get fired," Weis said. "The two losses were not close. We're not where we want to be. But I'm telling you, with the players we have coming in, including a couple of recruits that nobody knows are going to commit to us, we're going to be a lot better. A couple of years from now, you are going to remember that we had this conversation tonight." "All right," I said. "I'll remind you. No, you remind me." "I won't have to," Weis said. "We'll just look at each other, and you'll know."
I hope Charlie has some big surprises for us in recruiting. It's already a darn good class, and I hope it gets better. I hope that the surprises are some big ugly lineman on both sides of the ball!!! I am very hopefull that the two Tenn players Harrison and Donald will come to ND as well.
For my Irish buddies here, I hope it's goes as well as he suggests....a strong ND is a good thing for the game. However, evaluating recruiting classes is always a crap shoot! I have to always remind myself that the most highly coveted LB from our class of 01 never found the field and that our lowest was AJ Hawk. Our most highly touted recruit was a QB that rarely saw the field and ended up being a backup to the last kid offered in the class - Troy Smith who ended up winning the Heisman Trophy. 'Nuff said..... You can understand why I don't get too excited about it till we find out if they can play......!
No doubt, in the end it's not where you rank when you start but where you rank when you finish. We can all point to numerous 5* players who were just average or never played. The other thing is player developement. Take your own team, clearly JT has a great staff for player developement, as even this year if you look at the players that Ohio State has verbals from, it's not all that impressive. But somehow I figure by the time they are sophs they will be players. On the other hand Pete Caroll who just seems to line up droves of 4 and 5* players also seems to know what to do with them as they don't seem to have many failures. Where Charlie fits is yet to be determined.
Buckeye Terry, I agree with you to a degree. However...I think that time has bore out that if you get the higer ranked players that on average they will play better than the average lower ranked player. Terry O, there is no doubt in my mind that USC, Florida and Notre Dame are all headed for top 5 recruiting rankings. Georgia will be right there also. Illinios and South Carolina while not heading for a top 5 finish are in line to get very good classes that should improve their teams.
Bill, I don't disagree....that said, I much prefer Coach Tressel's stars to Tom Lemmings or his cohorts! TOK, a while back you posted data about where everybody's classes have been ranked historically. I don't recall us ever having the "#1" recruitinig class, but lo and behold we seem to have the #1 team! I seem to recall that the 01 or 02 class was highly rated, but the others seemed rather pedestrian by the recruiting guru's standards. I also think we can get caught up in how many 4-5* kids that are signed rather than pay attention to how and where those kids will line up.....we can give a team major kudos for signing 2 or 3 5* QB's when only one can play and they may be lacking depth at LBer or the DL for instance.....quality across the board is a much better indicator than the average * rating, imho. I think that has been a strength of Tressels tenure....we generally have been pretty solid across the board without any glaring gaps.
Speaking of.... <t>Recruiting I see USC just landed the top rated five star DE in the country from Arizona today. Man do they load up. Bummer.</t>
words to live by <t>you can't make chicken salad, out of chicken sh*t.<br/> <br/> I will take Charlie's word on a 3star over a Lemming 5 star anyday. Also, we shall see how he develops young talent.<br/> <br/> But to make the champ, you gotta have the right ingredients</t>