Early Independence Day fireworks continued for Notre Dame today when top 100 OT Charles Jagusah announced his commitment to the Irish. The 6’6”, 300 pound Illini had reportedly been down to Notre Dame and Michigan for some time and, well, you know how that goes.
recruiting at michigan & notre dame, summer 2022, in two images pic.twitter.com/eKp946n3zC
— Notre Dame, Our Blogger (@NDourBlogger) June 29, 2022
Like fellow ‘23 commit Elijah Paige, Jagusah holds Harry Hiestand in high regard and that was a big factor in his decision. In the evaluation period Hiestand made sure that the first visit he scheduled was to see Jagusah, so that’s definitely a two-way street In fact there have been some whispers that Harry thinks he has Q-level potential, which feels blasphemous, but hey, I didn’t say it.
I would like to thank all of the coaches and programs that have given me this life changing opportunity. With that being said, I am very excited to announce my commitment to The University of Notre Dame #GoIrish @Marcus_Freeman1 @NDFootball pic.twitter.com/27OJ3Adt33
— Charles Jagusah (@cjagusah) June 30, 2022
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Jagusah’s wrestling career. In February, he capped off a perfect season with a dominant run through the field at the state tournament. That followed a sophomore season in which he placed fourth in the state, competing both seasons at 285 pounds. He’s absurdly quick for his size and that showed repeatedly on the mat. No wonder Harry is stoked.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247Sports Composite — 4 star (.9752 rating), #55 overall, #5 OT, #1 in IL
On3 Consensus — 4 star (94.75 rating), #41 overall, #4 OT, #1 in IL.
The 247 Composite and On3 Consensus both combine 247, On3, Rivals, and ESPN rankings.
247Sports — 4 star (94 rating), #64 overall, #6 OT, #1 in IL
On3 — 5 star (98 rating), #7 overall, #1 OT, #1 in IL
Rivals — 4 star (5.9 rating), #122 overall, #10 OT, #3 in IL (???)
ESPN — 4 star (85 rating), #71 overall, #6 OT, #1 in IL
Friend of the Stripes Jamie Uyeyama does the recruit evaluations for ISD, and we trust his evals as much as anyone’s. So while the 247 Composite and the On3 Consensus don’t factor in ISD evals, we put a lot of weight on them ourselves.
Irish Sports Daily — 4 star (93 rating)
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame and (lol) Michigan, Jagusah holds offers from Arkansas, Auburn, Iowa, Miami, LSU, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia, among others.
Highlights
His technique, quite honestly, is terrible. His raw power and athleticism, on the other hand, are terrifying. I think he played high and “caught” rushers, let them get into his body rather than shocking them with a firm hand strike to the pads, way too often. In the end it didn’t matter much though as his outstanding leverage, footwork, and power let him treat them all like Raggedy Andy. He’ll need to fix that at the next level, which of course plays into Hiestand’s strengths. No doubt what really has Harry’s interest piqued is the ferocity that Jagusah plays with – that’s much harder to teach, maybe even impossible, and Jagusah has it to spare. I don’t know about a broader comparison to Q, but throwing guys to the ground and then landing on them certainly makes one reminisce.
Impact
As you may have guessed, I doubt Jagusah will be an instant impact guy just due to the areas he needs to polish Add in the current depth chart, with Blake Fisher and Joe Alt likely starting on the edge through 2023 at least, and it’s almost certain that Jagusah will have to wait a bit. He has the tools though to develop into an elite starter and potentially another first rounder for Harry.
Welcome to the Irish family, Charlie!
Great stuff, they’re going to keep you guys busy this week in the best way! Notre Dame back up to the #1 class in 2023 and 2024 again too, as of now.
Jagusah looks like the perfect prospect, all the talent and physical gifts in the world, just needs time to learn under Hiestand and be ready when Alt/Fisher depart.
I also kinda wonder what the viability of either leaving early would be, even though it gets talked about with some level of certainty right now. I believe (could be wrong) that Nelson was considered a first rounder after three years, but came back for a 4th year and it was very beneficial. Same with McGlinchey as a 5th year. OL seems like the one spot where staying in school, even when a player could leave for and be a good pick, is a wise decision and one that could reasonably be expected.
With Fisher’s size and ability, it seems like he could make the jump early and it makes sense. Alt gives me that McGlinchey vibe where the longer he stays in school, the better it will be for his NFL stock. I assume with his father being a longtime great NFL player, the family will understand that the league isn’t going anywhere, so I guess just talking out loud but perhaps it’s not as open and shut as it’s generally talked about now that both will be gone soon.
Interesting that Jamie U compares him to a skinny Aaron Banks and says he has elite guard potential. Don’t see that often for a 6’6 285 lb kid.
There will be so much OL athleticism on this team with Jagusah, Paige, Wagner, and Schrauth. These are the guys that HH turns into top 10 picks.
FWIW his wrestling weight is 285 and his football weight is 300. Could probably get to 315/320 pretty easily. Only noted for those who may be concerned about his size.
That said, can’t find anything here to disagree with, lol. He’s going to be a good one.
Pretty sure 285 is what you have to be under to still wrestle these days in the heavyweight weight class. Which probably sucks for him, but I’m sure the only reason and times he is ever 285 is when he cuts weight for a wrestling weigh in.
I wonder if he will continue to wrestle as a senior. Since he won state and went undefeated, (hopefully) he feels like he’s done all he needs to do in that sport, to add my own editorializing. That would surely be best for his football career to stop staying at/near 285 and start putting on more weight to prep for college.
Either way, like you say Brendan, I’m sure whenever he doesn’t need to make the 285 weight that he will quickly get up to 315+ once he gets to eat freely and not need to cut his water weight lol
Edit: is he going to EE? If so, he won’t be wrestling in 2023-23 anyways, so 285 might already be well in the rear view.
Of these, you can never have too many.
Absolutely love to see it.
The 2023 class is now up to 262.78 points on 247. The 2022 class (with 6 additional players) was just 275.44. The 2020 class was only 251.28 TOTAL.
Yea, the two biggest things about this class will be the blue-chip rate and the # of top 100 players. With only 2 composite 3 stars, the blue-chip % could reach 90(!!!!). Right now it’s 87.5%. And I don’t think we are really in it with many or any other 3 stars.
I think Ronan Hanafin is the lowest ranked player we are still recruiting. He’s like borderline 3/4 star. So yeah, the ratio is looking excellent.
Yea he’s a 4 star right now but you are right – on the 4/3 star border.
And love the LOL with Michigan!
Looking at their board on 247 a little more closely, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them finish with 1 top 150 player and 4 or 5 4 stars TOTAL. Which at a quick glance might be roughly a 25-30ish class.
I have to believe that Harbaugh trying to leave for the NFL really shot Michigan’s chances of improving their recruiting. And if you look at it they’ve been ranked in the 10-15 range the past few years – so not that much different from ND (before 2022). But now after their big year, they look like they are about to plummet in recruiting.
And I almost wonder if Harbaugh doesn’t somehow pick it up either in 2023 or 2024 that with a sub-par year (which I would basically expect losing those high NFL draft picks) that they’d look to get rid of Harbaugh after next season. The only thing that might give him a little more time is if that 5 star QB – McCarthy looks amazing.
Also, I was curious about USC then, and it doesn’t look like they are in for a big bump recruiting either. Perhaps will end up with 4 top 100 players (most/all on offense – one is an athlete so I assume offense) which is where they have been the last 2 years. They obviously got a big infusion of talent with the transfer portal but I would have expected a bigger Riley recruiting bump more quickly.
Then, I was curious about Oklahoma and it seems like they’ll finish around the same number of top 100 players as they’ve had in the past few years too. Interesting.
One knows that I am not Stanford’s fan, but LOL Michigan. Even ‘furd has a Top 50 class and is beating you in quantity and quality (if either word can truy be used to describe their 2023 classes).
Speaking of USC – just saw a notice that USC and UCLA are looking to join the big 10 in 2024. That’s pretty big news. How would that affect ND?
The pac 12 would obviously would be closer to the big 12 as a non-big-time conference – unless Oregon really explodes onto the scene. But it can’t but hurt them a lot to have USC leave. They’ve obviously been down but they are the one school who has the potential to be elite.
Does that speed up Clemson looking for another conference with the ACC media rights deal being an anchor for that conference? And if they leave, depending on where they go does that speed up superconferences happening – SEC and Big 10.
Wow, that seems illogical.
We cant even get USC out to play after the cold weather rolls in. Now they want to play half their games in the Midwest and Maryland? I doubt the bigger boys (and the smaller boys like Michigan) will allow them to schedule every important game early or in LA.
Offer them a share of Big-10 revenue and the timing of football scheduling and location suddenly becomes a very small potato.
Exactly. It’s easy to tell one team they don’t want to play in the cold but offer them a boatload of money that makes sense for them to JOIN the conference and they don’t care about the weather anymore.
I assume it’s some sort of gentleman’s agreement that allows ND to play there to end the season and recruit every other year and USC goes to ND in Sept/Oct. It’s not like it doesn’t get cold in Utah, Colorado, Washington and Oregon.
So I guess it’s RIP ACC-Big10-Pac12 alliance?
Based on TV revenue, college sports is consolidating quickly from P5 into two super conferences (Big10 and SEC), who I presume will eventually leave the NCAA behind completely at some point in the not too distant future.
Not sure what this means for ND, I saw the ACC response was “give Notre Dame whatever is takes to join in football”, might be a positive if that conference needs ND more than ND needs it.
I guess that the path to a national title is still open for now as an independent, but who knows who long that might be the case.
Financially at some point it might go from “inconvenient and we’re OK knowing we’re leaving some money on the table” to more like “it’s impossible to stay independent and keep up as a major program” but that might be hyperbolic in the moment.
Yea agree about the issue about money. It’s one thing to leave 10-15 million on the table but soon it may be double or triple that. What are we leaving on the table even currently?
Yea, it’s not a good sign if ACC is desperate and the only way that would even be remotely considered would be if the media rights deal could be re-done with ND joining. Right now, the ACC is WAY behind in terms of media rights and the deal is up for over a decade if memory serves. There’s no way the ACC survives.
One would presume ND would join the big 10 when it becomes two super conferences and a BUNCH of extra money. And at that point I wonder how different it would be from being independent since a lot of the good teams are going to be in 2 conferences. What kind of scheduling would/could you do with so many teams in a conference? It would/could easily be pretty varied and still leave room to schedule big-time teams/programs every year.
And I just need to ask: Swarbrick isn’t going anywhere soon right? The next 2-3 years is going to involve a lot of change and we need someone to make some good decisions that will have an impact for decades to come.
ND is going to have to have serious thoughts about joining the big 10. Here’s a projection of what teams will make in various conferences (included are USC/UCLA move to the big 10).
For reference I found that ND makes $15 million a year from its NBC deal up in 2025.
There’s no way we can be giving up $60+ million annually(!!!) to stay independent. And like in my other comment, if there are really 2 super conferences I wonder how different joining a conference will actually be for football right now with super-conferences.
Though our NBC deal is kind of old so I wonder what ND could get in this market too. Maybe more like $30 million — which would keep it at a $60 million dollar discrepancy compared to the big 10. And obviously if ND joined, the big 10 media deal would be even bigger.
And all of this (media rights) assumes no one else moves. That’s not going to happen. With a super-conference the media-rights deal is going to likely be even bigger per-team.
Nice look. I’m still not sure a new deal from NBC (or Amazon or Apple or whomever) makes much a difference though by the mid-2020’s when the SEC and Big-10 really take off. Gotta look in the longer term.
I wonder what is stopping this from going full “super league” and kicking out the lesser programs from the big conferences. Is paying minnows a full share to load up on wins for the big dogs worth it? Or do they get even more cut-throat (and maybe sacrifice some TV markets) to add more. As in SEC grab Clemson, Miami, FSU and kick out Vanderbilt, Arkansas and Mizzou or something like that. Not sure if that is even possible or feasible under current guidelines, but as this morphs less into regional schools and more into nation-wide super conferences who knows what is next.
Agreed on the money.
Yea, I wonder if a super-league would have to be formed by technically starting a new league. Call it whatever you want but SEC+ will be the big dawgs from the SEC and the ACC members you mention for example.
So instead of kicking members out (yea, not sure if that is possible exactly), you would just be starting your own new conference and not invite those smaller schools.
It is definitely an interesting point going forward. Super-conferences you would think would get rid of those lesser teams – unless they are semi-useful as a kind of warm-up games (But I would imagine you could get those games whether they were in your conference or not.)
This could be a lot of chaos in the next 12 months. I wonder if ADs/presidents are scrambling today to figure out what is going to happen next and what they need to do to stay ahead of the curve.
The other thing that could happen is simply that those lesser schools don’t get an even share of the money. Somehow the payout could be tied to on-field success.
Just realized this kid is from a the Catholic HS I would have gone to, had I chosen to continue going to a Catholic school. Bad news is the school is suffering from declining enrollment and a lot of infighting with the Diocese and a not great overall culture. I believe there was an issue with the Athletic Director either this year or last – point being, I’m guessing the FB coaching isn’t the #1 priority at the school at the moment. So the initial assessment of “His technique, quite honestly, is terrible. His raw power and athleticism, on the other hand, are terrifying. ” is really good news, especially given HH’s track record. Also, Alleman went 0-9 last year and was outscored 14-489 (Average score 54-2), the team was bad.