The week in news- Responsible Pete, Recruiting Networks and The Top 25 ND Players

*What is Erin Andrews cranking?

*What’s Carroll’s life going to be like in 10 years? He’ll almost certainly fail in the NFL, then what? How are we going to view his dominance at USC as the years pass? I wonder how USC is going to handle it too.

*What exactly is T. Boone Pickens title in relation to Oklahoma State? What if some billionaire was doing this at Florida or Alabama? It seems incredibly shady.

*I found Scipio’s piece on that new recruiting site incredibly vague. Some of the proposed new upgrades from what the other services are providing seem nice, but it’s not even developed yet. Maybe it’s that I don’t go balls to the wall with recruiting information? I don’t know, guess I’m not that pumped about the idea. Kind of seems like Mikael Prokorov saying the Nets are going to become a dynasty. I need some proof first!

*It’s weird how there were a lot of loud voices proclaiming Kelly’s inability (or inexperience) to recruit on a national scale just a few months ago. Now, everyone seems to be buying in that he can do this. I never had any doubts really, with his track record as a coach mixed with his political background and the product of ND itself…he’ll bring in very good recruiting classes. The big difference I think we’ll see (and this will probably be the next thing people harp on Kelly about) is that we won’t be getting too many 5-star guys. Unless we’re a national title contender the next two years, I bet we only grab two or three at the very max. With Weis, it seemed like we got those Clausens, Floyds, Rudolphs and Crists, but after transfers and lack of development, we were much too thin. Kelly doesn’t have that NFL pedigree to lure the big fish in on reputation, but the biggest advantage he’ll have is that he knows a lot of people, coaches, and high school programs. I’m not so sure Weis had a very initimate knowledge and personal connections to a lot of high schools. So maybe we won’t pick up the 3rd best receiver or 2nd best linebacker, but I bet we start getting a lot of quality 4-star guys that Kelly knows really well and has good information and people telling him that the kid will be a great player. In this regard, I think our goal should be to imitate Ohio State, because they bring in a 5-star once in a while, but really pick up nasty 4-star players. They didn’t even have a highly ranked class in 2010 with 8 4-star and 9 3-stars…but I bet that class is still the best in the Big Ten when it’s all said and done.

*I was very skeptical of Doug’s post over at We Are ND. It makes a lot of good points, but I just can’t believe that there isn’t a lot of excitement because of Kelly and that it’s spilling over to ticket sales. The two games I’ve been to the crowd wasn’t great, but I swear there wasn’t a seat to be had in the whole place. Getting tickets may be easier nowadays because of new technology and the program isn’t dominant, but I think he’s being a little doom and gloom about the whole issue. There’s no way you can just walk up right before game time and buy a ticket for less than face value, let alone find one on the ground! Maybe once in a blue moon you could score some cheap tickets, but it must be incredibly rare.

Carroll is grabbing every penny he can while he can. I don’t think it will end well in the NFL for him either.

I don’ go that crazy on the recruiting myself purely due to prioritizing how I am going to spend my spare time. I don’t really spend any time checking a player out until he commits. That said the proposed site that Scipio is talking about sounds like it will be much more user friendly than all of the current options and make doing that few minutes of homework much easier. I will be interested to see it shake out.

That is a great take on Kelly’s recruiting. I think that is probably a very fair way to look at it and a reasonable expectation. You could probably just copy and paste that into a stand alone post and get some discussion going amongst our regulars.

I thought Doug’s post was a good reflection of some of the sentiment that I have seen on a couple of the other message boards etc. In short there is a disgruntled contingent of the fan base that have stopped sending in their ticket applications the last couple of years. The flip side is that I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing.

For starters, as he mentioned an infusion of new blood into the stadium could be a shot in the arm for the overall excitement level. I also think that by the end of September the excitement around the program might be such that walking up and getting tickets is no longer an option. I will be interested to see how he fares with his expirament. In short get your ND tickets now!