High school kids don't have common sense. They will remember that he coached in the NFL and they will block out everything else. If "educated" people at ESPN can't see that Notre Dame wasn't that good, I don't expect high school recruits to notice Weiss and his overrated connections.
It took me a while to find this thread, but it looks like one for me! First, ND's class for next year is looking great, but I'm like one of the earlier posters, and I will wait to see who is still here on signing day. Weis is supposedly demanding a true committment from these guys, but in the end they are 17-18 yr old kids. Someone else starts blowing good smoke up their butts, and they'll go back. As far as Charlie's NFL connection, I have to disagree w/ most of you as to the effect he had on draft day. Yes, Brady Quinn dropped like a rock, but the irish actually had more players drafted over the entire weakend than LSU and USC along with many other schools. Of the ones drafted, two were from one of the worst secondaries in the nation, and the majority were from the worst defense in the nation. It helps explain why the DC was run off after the sugar bowl. Next year is too hard to predict. Every time I make a prediction like others have laid out here (3,4, or even 5 losses), they end up suprising people and winning way more games than they should. Then I get cocky in another year and they end up costing me money. The one thing that you can add to Notre Dame along with overated is unpredictable.
LSU does the same thing. If you want to commit, you have to agree to not take any more visits. But, things change as signing day nears. Right now, your class is looking very good, but like it was said above: how your season goes may go a long way in determing how it ends. True, you did have more players than us drafted, but that is in large part because you had more people eligible. LSU only had one player that we expected to be drafted go undrafted (Jessee Daniels), and he was only expected to be a 6th/7th round guy anyway. Plus, all of our guys that didn't get drafted got on teams as FA within a day or two. Last I heard, ya'll still had a couple guys that hadn't found teams. Quinn is the most publicized ND player to fall, but Walker not getting drafted was what suprised me the most. What is hard to predict is how good the teams you're going to play will be. ND will lose to the good teams they play, it remains to be seen which teams those are.
USC has 19 players returning. It was expected to be a smaller number in terms of available players. We did have 3 juniors who could have declared, 1 who did, and at least 2 who would have been in this year if they hadn't left early the year before.
What ND has done over the last two years, and I expect to continue, is beat the teams they "should" beat. The problem has been, and I'm afraid will continue, is that they can't seem to pull off an upset. Year before last they came close against USC, and some may consider the Michigan game that year an upset, but last year they didn't even come close. I'm ok w/ that becasue the problem before was that they would pull off a huge upset, then choke against a team they should have easily beaten. Kind of like beating the No.1 ranked gators, then falling to Ole Miss or UAB.
Next year, its going to be pretty brutal thanks to Ty Willingham. At least, with Ron Zook, you'll have a good team in two years when Zook gets fired and a compotent coach can take over. I think expect that ND will end winning around 7 games. I don't see why it would. After all, in the past two drafts, SC players have ended up going lower than they were expected in the draft despite Carroll's NFL connections. Leinart fell from a number one pick to the tenth pick and Lendale White didn't get drafted in the first round even though he had been expected to. This year, we didn't see any SC players get drafted in the first round and yet SC continues to stockpile the talent. And, I don't think Quinn dropping to 22 will ultimately hurt recruiting. Weis could easily point out that Quinn wouldn't have been in that position to fall in the first place if Quinn hadn't been tutored by Weis. If Willingham was still coaching Quinn, Quinn would have been something like a fifth round pick or worse. Just take a look at the QBs rankings out of high school, and Quinn was never considered the second best QB. Scout had graded him as a four star recruit. Instead, there were more heralded recruits like Chris Leak at Florida who was USA Today's Player of the Year and a five star recruit. But, Leak ended up getting undrafted. Are you going to argue that Flordia's recruiting will take a hit because of that? A player like Trent Edwards, if he had been tutored by Weis, would have been a top five pick instead of falling to the third round. Plus, if you take a look at what Cleavland traded to get Quinn, its obvious how highly they rated him. By giving up their first round pick next year, Cleavland is probably gave up a top 5 pick for Quinn this year.
I just realized that you listed the safety as not getting drafted. The safety that entered the draft actually got picked up in the 5th-6th round. Nudkende (sp?) was No. 18. The other safety No. 9 Zibbowoski, stayed at ND for another year. He'll come out next year.
