It will be the rare kid who comes in with four or five stars who plays his entire tenure, whatever that is these days, with one team. It's simply too easy and lucrative to pull up stakes and move on at the first sign of a head wind.
Took a little closer look at the Kahoun kid. I think Rivals has him as a 4* and he has offers from the likes of Miami, Tenn, FL St etc so somebody that knows what they are looking at better than me on the videos thinks he’s a pretty good player. Again, for what it’s worth.
Notre Dame landed one of the most coveted edge-rushers in the class of 2024 today when Loghan Thomas committed to play ball for the Fighting Irish. The 6-3, 210-pounder from Katy (Texas) Paetow chose Notre Dame over scholarship offers from Georgia, Oklahoma, LSU, Texas, Texas A&M, USC and many others. Per 247Sports, Thomas is the No. 193 overall player in America, No. 13 edge-rusher nationally and No. 35 prospect in the state of Texas. The composite rankings have him pegged as the No. 173 overall talent this cycle. BREAKING: Four-star Edge-Rusher Loghan Thomas Commits to Notre Dame
We also lost a DL with a decommit from Owen Wafle. There is scuttlebutt that Freeman had a talk with him and I guess told him he didn't really have a spot for him, he's reportedly headed to Michigan now. This has caused some talk now about "roster" management and whether it's ethical or not. No good answer of course.
I'm glad people are starting to realize this. I can remember in the not so distant past that there were a lot of negative comments about how some coaches were managing their rosters. Now there is no good answer.
Seems to me that roster management was a lot easier before NIL and the revolving door known as the transfer portal.
Certainly times have changed in college sports. Most ND fans are very happy about Freeman managing the roster, but also realize that's the current norm and if your hope is to be a top 10 and CFP contending team you have to have players who can compete with Alabama not beat North Carolina. A typical comment on the Owen Wafle situation was this one where I stole the above comment. I'd rather ND not be in the business of pushing commits out. However, ND fandom has, for a long time, talked about ND needing to be willing to go after players that Bama, OSU, etc want so they can compete with those elite programs on the field. Christian said ND moved on from Wafle to get "players that can win a National Championship not beat North Carolina". Unfortunately, it appears that ND's pursuit of NC-caliber players is going to sometimes result in guys like Wafle being pushed out. From what I've read about Wafle, I tend to lean toward Groundbeef's assessment that he'd at least be a good depth/rotation guy.
At Notre Dame we always took a lot of pride in our graduation rate for the team. I don't think we'll be seeing many senior classes with almost 100% of them graduating. Part of it will be the staff having conversations with the players after the season where they are encouraged to move on as they aren't in the future plans, or the players deciding that they have a better option elsewhere. I have no doubt that the loss of Logan Diggs to LSU and Tyler Buchner to Alabama and Lorenzo Styles to Ohio State were not the result of them being told there was no future for them at ND.
I'm probably one of those people. But Saban has been ahead of the curve in his building/managing the program, what he was doing back then is now being done by everybody, at least everybody who wants to win. It's why he's been so successful and all within the rules.
I get it but it's interesting for me that what was so disgusting back then is ok now...all because of who is.doing it now.
Kind of Apples and Oranges, but similar reaction from across the college football world back in 1990 when Notre Dame broke with ABC/NCAA and signed their own TV deal with NBC. A lot of "it's not fair" ND now has an unfair advantage because they are going to be on TV so much, while the rest of the teams were still stuck with the old rules about being on no more than 1 time a year and only on ABC. Oh yeah and ABC still put us on once a year to add to the NBC exposure. Now everybody is on all the time.
Interesting take on it. So you're saying that Notre Dame is giving up its high moral ground in an attempt to win a National Championship? Hmmm?
When you pride yourself on graduation rates and players jump from team to team without any regard to degrees, there's not much you can do. I'm sure that their admissions standards still surpass the NCAA requirements and we still seem to be selective in allowing transfers. I like to think that the surrounding ground keeps sinking and we're trying to keep our distance.
Irish pick up a grad transfer RB Devyn Ford. Hasn't played much for PSU the past 2 years. He adds depth and experience at the position.
Well if you didn’t catch the ND-Va lacrosse semi-final you missed a real classic. Irish down by 2 with 2 1/2 min. to play tied it up and then fell behind again. The Irish tied the score with less than 15 sec. To go and won in OT. Finals on Mon. against, who else, Duke.
I watched the last 3 quarters. A heavyweight fight. Gip accurately described the end of regulation and the OT. Electric!