Archive for the ‘Opponent News’ Category

Here is a quick look at how Notre Dame’s opponents in 2007 fared in sending their players to the NFL this past weekend.

2007 Notre Dame Opponent Draft Results
	Opponent	Players Selected	1st and 2nd Rounders	2007 Record
	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	3	0	7-6
	Penn State Nittany Lions	2	0	9-4
	Michigan Wolverines	6	2	9-4
	Michigan State Spartans	3	1	7-6
	Purdue Boilermakers	3	1	8-5
	UCLA Bruins	3	0	6-7
	Boston College Eagles	3	2	11-3
	USC Trojans	11	7	11-2
	Navy Midshipmen	0	0	8-5
	Air Force Falcons	0	0	9-4
	Duke Blue Devils	0	0	1-11
	Stanford Cardinal	0	0	4-8

A couple of notes:

• The first thing that jumps is out the 11 prospects USC sent to the NFL - that is as many as we have sent over the last two drafts combined.
• Then when you consider that USC had 7 players drafted in the first two rounds alone it really shows you just how much talent Carroll has stockpiled out in LA.
• Other than USC, Michigan (6) was the only 2007 opponent to send more players into the NFL this year.

The fact that USC and Michigan sent more players to the NFL than the Irish should come as no surprise.  It is, however, a bit surprising that seven other teams that beat ND in 2007 had less NFL players.  Now, these numbers don’t tell the entire story though. 

Notre Dame only had 15 fourth and fifth year seniors in 2007 - Laws, Carlson, Zibby, Sullivan, Thomas, Price, Brockington, Jansen, Wooden, Stephenson, Crum, Bragg, Brown, Ferrine, Jabbie, Lambert, and Vernaglia.  Of that group, Crum, Brown, and Lambert came back for 5th years and Ferrine transfered to Delaware (where Jabbie may be joining him). 

Also note, none of the players selected from Notre Dame were “true seniors” - all were 5th year guys.  That brings us back to one of the reasons for Notre Dame’s stuggles in 2007 - a lack of a senior class. 

ProFootballTalk.com had a post on its rumor mill tonight about NFL Scouts getting a little leery of USC proscpects.

The concern is that too many of the players who emerge from the Trojan program love the SoCal lifestyle more than they love football.

Though it’s always dangerous to generalize (but what the hell, we’ll do it anyway), there have been a surprising number of busts to emerge from Pete Carroll’s no-pay (by the school) paradise.

In 2003, the Trojans sent a trio of solid players into the league:  Carson Palmer, Troy Polamalu, and Justin Fargas.  Since then, however, the only guy who has proven to be a consistent high-end talent is linebacker Lofa Tatupu.  The growing parade of busts includes Keary Colbert, Shaun Cody, Mike Patterson, Mike Williams, Darnell Bing, Dominique Byrd, Frostee Rucker, Winston Justice, Reggie Bush (relative to his draft status and hype), and Dwayne Jarrett.

Should this be the case, it certianly is something that could be used against USC on the recruiting trail.  Of course USC’s rebutal would be that those players were drafted high because they were coached up, but none the less, it is interesting to see people begin to question USC like this.

Note to any USC fans who happen to come across this - the “no-pay” reference is directly from PFT so don’t complain.

Former Notre Dame recruit and one time verbal commitment, Greg Little was named the starting running back for North Carolina earlier this week by head coach Butch Davis.

“For right now (he’ll play running back), at least probably for the ‘08 season and I would assume past that,” Davis said. ” … We kind of went through the running back by committee deal, I think to the detriment of our football team.”

One move reflects that commitment to Little. Johnny White, who was the team’s rushing leader last season and was the fastest player in pre-spring testing (a 4.32-second 40-yard dash), moved to cornerback.

As well all remember, Little was committed to Notre Dame up until Signing Day last year when he ditched the Irish for the Tar Heels after repeatedly saying he was committed to Notre Dame during the days and weeks leading up of Signing Day ‘07.

It had been widely speculated that part of the reason for the potential switch was a concern over a possible position change at Notre Dame. Many people felt he would make a better linebacker than receiver in the recruiting community.  Ironically, had he stayed committed to Notre Dame, Little would have very likely seen plenty of playing time in 2007 at receiver and would be challenging for a starting role at the position this spring.

Notre Dame will travel to Chapel Hill on October 11 to take on the Tar Heels.

Is this a joke, Bobby?

On Friday, February 8, Florida State released its 2008 football schedule. The mighty Noles will be opening their season with back-to-back home games versus–drum roll, please–Western Carolina and Tennessee-Chattanooga.

Both I-AA teams, the WCU Catamounts are 3-19 in the last two seasons while the UT-Chattanooga Moccasins have torn through the I-AA ranks with a two-year mark of 5-17.

Reeling from multiple suspensions related to academic fraud (now there’s a shocker) that will leave FSU without several starters for the first three games of 2008, FSU Coach Bobby Bowden shamelessly acknowledged:

“There’s no way we would be ready to play a ranked team at that time…the first three ballgames we’re going to have around, what, 12 scholarship guys out?”

For those not paying attention at home, Bowden just said, “Yep, I’m a pussy.” Even worse, he was almost glib about failing to keep his kids in good academic standing. Seeing as Bobby’s integrity is already a non-starter, I guess he might as well piss on basic accountability while he’s at it.

Thank God this scheduling isn’t endemic to the rest of Division I-A. At least we can count on, say, the defending national champion LSU Tigers to schedule aggressively. Les Miles is a man among boys! He’ll take on anyone…anytime…anywhere! Can I get an Amen from SEC country? I mean, it’s not like LSU’s 2008 schedule has eight home games, including a four-game non-conference gauntlet of Appalachian State, Troy, North Texas and Tulane.

Oh please, spare me the lame-ass one-liners about Notre Dame scheduling the Coast Guard and Merchant Marines. I’m not a big fan of scheduling the service academies, if only because it gives all the intellectually lazy ND haters of the world an excuse to spin total bullshit as fact. The real facts are these: the Naval Academy has one of the top Div I-A winning percentages since 2003, while the Air Force Academy has been been a legitimate mid-major bowl team for a quarter century. If you think scheduling the likes of Navy or Air Force is the same as scheduling not one, but two Div I-AA opponents in the same season, you’re incapable of having an honest discussion–about anything–so shut the hell up.

———————

 [Note: only days after this article was written, Florida State put all of its athletic programs on two-year probation. According to an AP report issued on February 14, 2008, 60 student-athletes spread out across all FSU sports programs have lost or will lose some eligibility. Bottom line: any parent who willingly watches his or her child sign a Letter of Intent for Florida State should be charged with negligence. That "school" is a joke. And beyond that scoreboard they don't care what happens to your kids. ]

So I woke up yesterday morning expecting to thoroughly enjoy National Signing Day. Most recruiting analysts projected Notre Dame as having one of the top classes in the country, its best in well over a decade, with an outside shot at ending the day with the #1 ranked class.

For the most part, that’s what happened. The ND faithful were a little disappointed when Milton Knox deferred to Hometown U and picked UCLA, but other than that it was a great day. A surprise commit from Kapron Lewis-Moore briefly vaulted ND to #1 in several recruiting rankings, but the Irish eventually got in line behind Alabama to be ranked a near-consensus #2 by the likes of Rivals.com, Scout.com, and Tom Lemming.

Note that I said near-consensus.

I had some time to spare, so I made the mistake of watching some of ESPNU’s coverage of National Signing Day.  I didn’t expect a whole lot from this crew. While the other aforementioned recruiting analysts use fairly complex methodology in ranking teams, ESPN pretty much collectively pulls info out of its ass. Their defining criteria in ranking recruits boils down to 1) Did you play in the Under Armour High School All-Star game that we televised? 2) Do you live in the state of Florida?

Knowing this, I was still shocked at ESPN’s final rankings. Alabama and Notre Dame, the near-consensus 1-2 recruiting classes in the country? Try #3 and #9. Even better, at the beginning of the day ESPN had Notre Dame ranked #7 and Alabama #9. How does Bama go from #9 to #3 in the span of about 12 hours while ND gains an elite player and drops two spots? I won’t speculate on ESPN’s venomous hatred of all things Notre Dame, but I will speculate on Alabama. I figure an industrious ESPN intern was surfing the other recruiting websites and said to himself, “Wow, we are staggeringly stupid.”

Tom Luginbill is the National Recruiting Director for ESPN’s Scouts Inc. (not to be confused with Scout.com, the older and more credible recruiting service). It is reasonable to say no one does less homework on the recruiting trail than Luginbill and his lackeys. They indiscriminately start, flame and retract unsubstantiated rumors. They sport wood for any kid in the Sunshine State who runs a 4.4. And they are unabashed Urban Meyer jock sniffers.

Case in point, ESPN singularly projected the Florida Gators as having the #1 recruiting class for 2008 heading into National Signing Day. And by “singularly” I mean every other recruiting service looked at them and said, “Pass me what you’re smoking.” Looking at UF’s depth chart, any armchair recruitnik could identify a stud running back and some elite offensive lineman as absolute musts, plus maybe a few receivers coupled with a Tebow understudy. And yet, when the dust had settled on NSD, Florida had suffered two elite Signing Day decommits, they whiffed on quarterback, they whiffed on running back, other than one touted juco they whiffed on wide receiver, they didn’t get a tight end, and they managed only one good and one mediocre offensive lineman.

What did this unbalanced class yield Florida? As the ESPNU NSD coverage wrapped up Wednesday evening, the Gators were still at #1. To their credit, by Thursday morning morning ESPN had dropped Florida all the way down to #4, sighting the said decommits of elite linebacker and o-line prospects Ramon Buchanan and Ricky Barnum. Curiously however, the ESPNU talking heads neglected to mention these defections during their Wednesday broadcast, even going so far to interview Urban Meyer a full three hours after the decommits were public knowledge and have a circle jerk about his “#1 class” and how it “met all their needs.” (Speaking of the Florida head coach, did he even wait until the ink dried on Omar Hunter’s LOI before reneging on his promise that defensive coordinator Greg Mattison wasn’t going to the NFL? There’s slimey, and then there’s Urban.)

Meanwhile, Notre Dame fans watched as for most of the day ESPN had Kapron Lewis-Moore—a Texas A&M decommit for the better part of a week who faxed his Letter of Intent to Charlie Weis around 9:30 AM EST—as an Aggie commit. And then, to add insult to injury, ESPN dropped Notre Dame from #7 to #9, apparently because they failed to land Milton Knox, who was already committed to UCLA anyway. It wasn’t quite the snub ND and other schools endured a couple months ago when ESPN blatantly downgraded any players who opted for Tom Lemming’s Army All-Star Game over their Under Armour game, but a snub nonetheless.

Look, I realize oftentimes these recruiting rankings are a crapshoot. But when the “leader in sports entertainment” gets into the business of high-stakes college football recruiting, I would expect at least a modicum of intelligence and professionalism. ESPN’s research is shoddy. Their recruiting analysts wear their agendas on their sleeves. They’ve turned their recruiting coverage into a shameless vehicle for the Under Armour All-Star Game. All in all, their product is a steaming pile of tabloid-quality wildebeest dung. Luginbill & Co. have the biggest microphone and the biggest stage, and they are little more than PR guys for high school football south of the Mason-Dixon Line. ESPN’s viewers deserve better. College football coaches, players, and fans deserve better.

The Detroit Free Press published an article today that is sure to piss off just about every Michigan fan with an internet connection.

If Terrelle Pryor, perhaps the No. 1 football recruit in the country, wants to start as a freshman, he should go to Michigan. There’s no doubt about that.

He’s a quarterback in the mold of Vince Young, tall and mobile. Given the depleted state of the Wolverines’ depth chart, the Jeannette, Pa., product would be the first-stringer the moment he signed on the dotted line.

But if his ultimate designs are on the NFL – and whose aren’t at that age? – he should go to Ohio State. There, he won’t be thrown to the wolves before he’s ready.
There, he’ll have to earn his position. And there, he’ll better learn how to be an NFL signal caller.

Rich Rodriguez’s zone-read offense is tailor-made for Pryor. But what will that do for him at the next level? West Virginia quarterback Pat White – Rodriguez’s former pupil — is a terrific college player, but his best bet for an NFL future is as a cornerback or kick returner. Granted, Pryor has better physical tools than White. But NFL teams will be skeptical of a QB coming out of a zone-read offense, no matter how talented he is.

Wow.  That article would make even Jeff Carroll blush.  Mind you this article was written by an MSU alum, but that doesn’t explain how an editor let this print.

Can you imagine the uproar in South Bend if someone from the South Bend Tribune published an article stating a linebacker or corner shouldn’t go to Notre Dame because our defense has been weak the last couple of years?  Weis would blow through the freakin’ roof.

Add this to the fairly unflattering articles about Ryan Mallet’s transfer and the Rich Rodriguez Era in Ann Arbor is off to a very entertaining start.

“Tell me how many guys have run the spread and made it past college to the next level.” –Ryan Mallet, former UM QB, Detroit News, 1/10/2008

Take these words to heart all you high school QBs, especially those with visions of winged helmets in their future. And while you’re doing that, go ahead and ponder this list of spread-offense QBs:

• Akili Smith
• King Kingsbury
• Michael Vick
• Andre Ware
• Josh Harris
• Troy Smith
• Kyle Boller
• Tommie Frazier
• Antwaan Randle El
• Eric Crouch

And that’s just off the top of my head! Sit back, relax, and watch the spread offense continue to put its indelible mark on the NFL in the coming years. As we speak, Urban Meyer’s original golden boy, Alex Smith, has just led his San Francisco 49ers to a stellar 5-11 record.

Well, technically, former Bowling Green QB Josh Harris is Meyer’s original golden boy. In the span of two years Harris went from being a 2004 6th-round draft pick to being a substitute teacher in Westerville, Ohio.

So the lesson here is, play for Rich Rodriguez and you can get a job as a part-time teacher making ashtrays in shop class. I guess that’s something.

And message to Ann Arbor: “The Cradle of Quarterbacks” is dead and buried.

The guys over at Black Shoe Diaries posted a pretty good recap of each Notre Dame - Penn State game up to and including last year’s 41-17 win by the Irish. Part of their post has an explanation as to why Penn State fans generally hate Notre Dame more so than the other way around:

* Notre Dame fans consider USC and even Michigan as bigger rivals than Penn State.
* North Eastern Pennsylvania has a high population of Catholics. Growing up in high school I was fortunate to attend just about every single football game and we played a lot of teams from NE PA. I can tell you first hand that probably two out of every three high schools in NE PA have adopted the Notre Dame fight song as their own. Notre Dame is huge up there. They are just as big as Penn State if not bigger. This mix of fan bases living in close proximity gives the feel of a natural in-state rivalry.
* Penn State has a history of being snubbed by the media. Four times Joe Paterno has led an undefeated team that was not awarded the National Championship (’68, ‘69, ‘73, and ‘94). Notre Dame is unquestionably a media darling so it’s only natural Penn State’s hatred of the media would be directed toward the one the writers adore.

While I think most Notre Dame fans will get some amusement out of that last statement - at least based on recent history, overall its a pretty good read even if it may be written some white tinted glasses.

For comparison, here is a similar article I wrote last summer in preparation for last year’s contest and a blog post from Mac on the series from last year as as well.

While doing unrelated research today, I came across this stat regarding NFL MVPs. It’s a stat I have never heard mentioned on any ND message board, any ND publication or broadcast. Since the Associated Press started to announce the NFL’s most valuable players back in 1957, one school has stood atop the NCAA as having delivered the most number of players to be selected as the NFL’s MVP. You guessed it, Notre Dame.

The Irish have sent four players on to become NFL MVPs (Paul Hournung, Alan Page, Joe Theismann, Joe Montana). LSU and Alabama come in second with three, though it has been reported that Alabama claims seven.

This at the very least adds to a little of the intrigue to the Brady Quinn vs. Jamarcus Russell NFL career battle. Charlie Weis has said that in three years, Quinn will be one of the top three QBs in the league, while pundits like Todd McShay seemingly salivate daily over Russell, who rose as the media favorite after his most impressive day as a collegiate quarterback came against a lowly Notre Dame defense.

Last week Florida poached Justin Trattou from Notre Dame’s commitment list.  This week it looks like USC may be trying to visit Mike Ragone according to LA Daily Neews writer Scott Wolf:

USC coach Pete Carroll is scheduled to visit with Marvin Austin, the No. 1-ranked defensive tackle in the country, today. But we also hear Carroll might visit tight end Mike Ragone, who committed to Notre Dame almost nine months ago.

The Trojans do not have a tight end commitment this year and according to their prospect list on Scout.com, they only have  Eric Brooks (#57 tight end), Trey Henderson (#64 tight end), and Mikhail Marinovich (Not Ranked) left on the board.

Last week’s defection by Trattou certainly surprised me, but I could at least understand it because of his concerns over how he would be used in the 3-4.  Ragone switching, however, would completely shock me because of how well tight ends have  performed in Charlie Weis’s offense.  That success has led to Notre Dame landing the #2 ranked tight end last year in Konrad Reuland and the #2 ranked tight end this year in Ragone.