That is very impressive and shows unusual maturity for an eighth grader. Count me as a member of the Jonathon Bonner fan club. Thanks, Terry.
ND <t>Terry,<br/> <br/> I'm ready for sure. Not sure how this season will go for the Irish but I'm anxious to see what Kelly does when he finally has the players in place to do what he wants offensively. It's year 5 for Kelly so.......</t>
The team is 100% his now; all his players. Should score lots of points. His achilles heel has always been special teams, with the exception of Kyle Brindza. If he can improve the play there, well........
ND <t>I listened to part of a interview yesterday with QB guru George Whitfield who worked with Golson last summer. He speaks very highly of Golson and really seems to think he will have a great season.</t>
Certainly we need a great season from Golson, he's the key to our success on offense. The two kids behind him are talented but have never taken a snap in college so that'd be scary. Golson needs to stay healthy and I hope that we get some chances to play Zaire and get him some snaps. If Golson has a great year, and so does Johnny Manziel and another one by Russell Wilson then 6' dual threat QB's will get a boost and Golson certainly could decide to leave after this year, which will be his 4th year, he'd be eligible for a 5th year but I wouldn't be shocked if the opportunity to go presents itself and he takes it. As far as Kelly goes, as George said he's in his 5th year and while he's hardly built a team to rival Alabama, he does have on paper a good squad and one that has a lot of potential at least on offense, defense is yet to be seen...but I am hopeful. I want Kelly to be successful, not because I love the guy..he's not that easy to love if you know what I mean. He's no Lou Holtz or Ara Parseghian. People keep saying that if he has a good year and he gets another chance he'll bolt for the NFL. Maybe so. I just want a really good year and a shot at the playoffs, after that if he goes he goes.
Different eras, primarily pre-internet (Lou's time was "partial" internet, meaning not as much noise as today. Lou had an effusive and entertaining personality. He was very quotable. Ara was a taskmaster and didn't care about popularity. Both are much loved in retrospect because of their consistent production at ND. We haven't had that since Lou left. If Kelly produces a NC or gets us to the top of the heap on a consistent basis, people will "love" him in retrospect, like his two aforementioned predecessors. :wink:
Yeah it is hard to compare fans feelings in the pre-internet era to now. Certainly Ara is revered by ND fans, but if there had been bulletin boards during the 60's and 70's, would they have been so kind to his record vs USC which is 3-5-1, or his record vs Purdue which was 4-3. Hard to say. Lou caught the beginnings of the Internet. I was on Prodigy when we lost to Northwestern and things sort of exploded, led by our friend Joel who was just getting rolling on his years long criticism of ND/Navy. By the time Lou retired he was receiving a lot of criticism for his recruiting, his offense, the way he handled Rick Mirer and Ron Powlus, his sticking with the option when he didn't have an option QB. I remember in recruiting that some of the top QB's including Peyton Manning who might have considered ND seriously except that he saw what Lou made Ron Powlus do and opted for a Pro Style offense at Tenn with David Cutliffe...smart move by the Mannings.
Did people on bulletin boards criticize Lou for how he handled Ron Powlus? Or even criticize Powlus himself? I don't remember that. Do you, gipper? :wink: :lol:
I don't recall criticism of Lou as to how he handled Pawlus. I do however recall that Pawlus recieved criticism much like Tommy Rees. The difference was Pawlus came in as the top HS QB in the country and rose to mediocrity.
I can still remember Bill Walsh, when he was doing color on the ND broadcasts, talking about how Rick Mirer doesn't have the opportunity in Lou's offense to show what he can do. He was a big fan of Ricks, but thought Lou was badly misusing him. People today talk about the fondness of Kelly for the fade route, but Lou threw that route a lot, he liked low risk routes.
I'm pretty sure that everybody can start fall practice on Aug 1. I think it has to do with the number of days before your first game. Pretty much everybody has a game on Aug 30th. If your team doesn't play it's first game till later in the Labor Day weekend you probably have to wait a couple of days. Edit: Looked it up and you can have 29 days of practice before the 1st game: From an NCAA standpoint, here are the basics: Team can only have 29 practices before its first contest No consecutive two-a-day practices No two-a-days in first five days, also known as the acclimation period One-a-day practices can be no longer than three hours in length Two-a-day practices can be no longer than five total hours in length Walk-through does not count as part of the practice time, following the acclimation period Freshman must have six hours of academic orientation
Sid, that star pitcher, Ashe Russel, for Cathedral isn't going to ND after all. Seems that admissions is a problem and he's looking else where. He would have been one of our top recruits, maybe ever. I don't know anything about Cathedral HS, but I would imagine the course of study is solidly college oriented. Supposedly the kid had a 3.0 GPA as well. I wonder what went wrong. I wonder if he looked at the direction of the baseball program and decided it wasn't in his best interests at this time.
Didn't know this...Irish are going to Culver this year, sort of like last year off campus at Shiloh Park but for a longer time period. The word last year was that Kelly saw a lack of leadership and was hoping that going to Shiloh Park would result in some bonding and developement of some Sr. Leadership. Which never did workout. Guys who were in positions to be Sr. Leaders like Rees and Martin just weren't the type.
I think Lou took the team to Culver at least once in the mid 90s. Terry, that's interesting about Russell. I'll put my ear to the ground to see if I can pick up some local chatter. He already had said in an interview that if he gets drafted high in the first round, he won't go to college, so it may have been a pipe dream from the get-go. Cathedral has a pretty consistent pipeline to ND. It was founded years ago and run by the Holy Cross order until they turned it over to lay leadership around 30-40 years ago.