In the late Brian Kelly era I argued that Notre Dame’s head football coach needed to be a killer on the recruiting trail and anything less was putting a cap on the ceiling of talent available for the Irish. This would seem obvious to most college football fans but in the past Notre Dame didn’t always need or rely on great head coaching recruiting because the school largely sold itself, worked through a vast network of private schools, and carried the premier brand in the sport.
I’ve mentioned many times how Notre Dame has never been a national power without consistently excellent recruiting (including multiple no. 1 classes) but hasn’t necessarily lived with a terrific recruiter at head coach in modern times. Charlie Weis was arguably the best of the bunch and even his record was incredibly spotty and titled toward offense.
One of the poor recruiters was Lionel Tyrone Willingham hired by Notre Dame on New Years Eve 2001 and fired 1,065 days later on November 30, 2004.
To be completely fair, I am absolutely certain Willingham believed recruiting at Notre Dame would be easy. Far easier than what he experienced at Stanford. He stepped on campus 5 years, 1 month, and 1 day after the last game of Lou Holtz and wasn’t too far removed from an era where Holtz–while struggling a little in the 1990’s after ace recruiting coordinator Vinny Cerrato left town–still had a lot of recruiting power to unleash but did so in a more hands off approach that would be mimicked in the months to come under Willingham.
You could forgive Willingham for thinking he could be stoic, exude leadership, and Notre Dame would recruit itself as long as he took care of business on the field. Following his 1st season on campus, it seemed to be working reasonably well. It was a Return to Glory™ and the Irish signed the No. 12 class for 2003, including 5-star defensive end Victor Abiamiri among a class where nearly two-thirds would go on to strong starting careers in South Bend.
Then, it all fell apart. Very, very quickly.
Here is the list of assistants at Notre Dame tasked with carrying recruiting over this time period:
Defensive Coordinator: Kent Baer (2002-04)
Offensive Coordinator: Bill Diedrick (2002-04)
Offensive Line/Tight End: Mike Denbrock (2002-04)
Defensive Line: Greg Mattison (2002-04)
Interior Offensive Line: John McDonell (2002-04)
Wide Receiver: Trent Miles (2002-04)
Running Back/Special Teams: Buzz Preston (2002-04)
Linebacker: Bob Simmons (2002-04)
Defensive Back: Trent Walters (2002-03)
Defensive Back: Steve Wilks (2004)
What is the biggest thing that jumps out? Willingham brought Baer, Diedrick, Denbrock, McDonell, Miles, and Preston with him from Stanford and Trent Walters (who came to Notre Dame from the Minnesota Vikings) was the only assistant to leave (he joined the Eagles for 2004) over this entire tumultuous period. This was controversial when it happened and nowadays, this would be sacrilegious.
Notre Dame was struggling both on and off the field and Willingham in tandem with the university administration simply did…nothing.
It also wasn’t the most exciting and enthusiastic staff.
Beginning in 2003, the coaches would turn the following ages: Baer (54), Diedrick (56), Mattison (54), McDonell (44), Miles (40), Preston (47), Simmons (55), and Walters (60) while only Denbrock (39) and Wilks (34) were under 40. Willingham himself turned 50 in December of 2003.
In comparison, the current Notre Dame coaching staff are: Marcus Freeman (36), Al Golden (53), Tommy Rees (30), Brian Mason (32), Harry Hiestand (63), Deland McCullough (48), Mike Mickens (34), Chris O’Leary (29), Gerad Parker (41), Chansi Stuckey (38), and Al Washington (38).
Age isn’t everything but when you’re having problems selling your school due to the results on the field and you’re trotting out mostly older men on the trail who are not backed up by an excited head coach it’s a recipe for disaster.
Both of Willingham’s coordinators would follow him to the embarrassing Washington campaign (11-37 overall) and would never do anything in major college football afterward. McDonell ran back to Stanford for 2005 and then Purdue for 2006-08 and has been out of Power 5 jobs since.
Trent Miles followed Willingham to Washington and eventually became head coach at Indiana State and Georgia State (combined 29-74 record) and hasn’t held a full job in college since 2016.
Buzz Preston didn’t coach in 2005, went back to Stanford for 2006, then New Mexico in 2007 before landing at Georgia Tech for a long time and is currently the offensive coordinator at Thomas University, a new football team centered around helping military members transition to civilian life.
1/12/04: Rivals reports ND offered 26 players and Tyrone is going in-home with 6 this week.
Simmons followed Willingham to Washington and has never returned to college football after leaving Seattle. Walters coached the Eagles secondary until 2007 and then retired while Wilks spent a year at Washington and has largely been in the NFL ever since and is currently the Carolina Panthers secondary coach.
Mattison and Denbrock we know well. The former was held over from the Davie era where he was defensive coordinator and had a very successful 40+ year coaching career. The latter followed Willingham to Washington but was able to resurrect his career by coming back to Notre Dame under Brian Kelly for 7 seasons, spent 5 successful seasons as offensive coordinator at Cincinnati, and just moved with Kelly to LSU to coordinate the Tigers’ offense this fall.
This wasn’t the type of staff that could carry recruiting with a team failing on the field, a head coach enjoying the golf course, and believing a bunch of late offers and in-home visits in January of senior years were going to wow high school stars.
Instead, this is how you only sign 31 players over 2 cycles.
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2004-05 Recruiting
The Composite scores aren’t super accurate from such a long time ago but they give a general idea of the talent level with only 9 players in the Top 300 which is almost as many as the amount of 2 stars (7) that were recruited over this 2-year period. A quick recap of this mess:
Quarterback
Evan Sharpley 0.8556
David Wolke 0.8111
Darrin Bragg 0.7667
Bragg moved to receiver and never played, then switched back to quarterback and still never played. Wolke threw 3 passes for Notre Dame and transferred to Western Kentucky where he threw 13 touchdowns and 18 interceptions. Sharpley was a career backup who had the pleasure of playing 99% of his snaps during the 2007 season.
Running Back
Junior Jabbie 0.9000
Justin Hoskins 0.8778
Darius Walker 0.8778
Asaph Schwapp 0.8111
Jabbie of “whoosh” fame stayed at Notre Dame long enough to finish with 35 career rushing yards. Hoskins would leave after a couple years and finish with 809 rushing yards at Central Michigan. Walker was the top player from these classes by far with 3,249 rushing yards in 3 seasons. Schwapp (who sadly passed away from cancer 9 years ago) was a rarely used fullback finishing with 98 yards.
Tight End
Joey Hiben 0.9000
Hiben would quit football to focus on his architecture major.
Wide Receiver
D.J. Hord 0.9440
David Grimes 0.8333
Hord was the top recruit in these 2 classes, returned a few kickoffs, and caught 2 passes before transferring to Northern Iowa. Grimes had a solid career given his low 3-star status with 900 receiving yards.
Offensive Line
Paul Duncan 0.8778
Michael Turkovich 0.8556
Chauncey Incarnato 0.8556
John Kadous 0.8556
Duncan and Turkovich would make a bunch of starts on some really lousy lines. Incarnato transferred to Indiana after 1 year with the Irish and then moved to UMass in 2007. Kadous graduated from Notre Dame and that’s all I know about him.
Defensive Line
Brandon Nicolas 0.8556
Ronald Talley 0.8333
Patrick Kuntz 0.8333
Derrell Hand 0.8333
Justin Brown 0.7889
Nicolas transferred to Colorado after 1 season and would be a decent starter for the Buffaloes. Talley showed promise early in his career but left school after just 2 seasons before landing at Delaware and having a cup of coffee in the NFL. Kuntz turned into a good player later in his career with 8 tackles for loss as a senior. Hand basically did nothing while Brown played a decent amount over 4 seasons accumulating 72 tackles and 10.5 tackles for loss.
Linebacker
Anthony Vernaglia 0.9222
Kevin Washington 0.8556
Scott Smith 0.8556
Maurice Crum 0.8778
Abdel Banda 0.7889
Steve Quinn 0.7667
Vernaglia stuck around and ended up playing a little bit in 2007 finishing his career with 25 tackles. Washington didn’t make a dent and grad transferred to Abilene-Christian to finish his career. Smith was an underwhelming backup who totaled 54 tackles across 4 seasons. Banda medically retired during his sophomore season while Quinn was another underwhelming backup who totaled 31 tackles in his career.
Maurice Crum had a very good career notching 248 tackles and 19 tackles for loss. He’s currently the co-defensive coordinator at Ole Miss.
Defensive Back
Terrail Lambert 0.8778
David Bruton 0.8333
Kyle McCarthy 0.8333
Ray Herring 0.8333
Leo Ferrine 0.7667
Tregg Duerson 0.7000
Duerson, son of former star Irish safety Dave Duerson who tragically took his own life after dealing with CTE, quit football after one season. Ferrine saw the field quite a bit in 2005 but never made a big impact thereafter. Herring stayed 5 seasons in South Bend totaling 53 tackles.
Thank goodness Notre Dame got quality play out of the trio of Lambert, Bruton, and McCarthy. We saw Lambert total 115 tackles and 4 interceptions from 2005 to 2008. Bruton developed into a very good starter as an upperclassman and ended up playing 8 seasons in the NFL. McCarthy stayed 5 seasons and had some good moments totaling 241 tackles and 8 interceptions.
Holy hell that was depressing. I was young and recruiting intel was not where it is today but i’m sure I talked my self I to some of those guys being good. Honestly it’s also a testament to charlie. I mean he had a lot of his own issues but essentially a two year pass at recruiting back then is crushing
In my “Why I Still Don’t Hate Charlie Weis” piece last year, I mentioned the Walker recruitment and how, even at the time with limited info, it seemed like ND fans were hanging onto that one desperately to salvage the class. And he wasn’t even a 4-star player! It was the modern equivalent of us praying that someone like C’Bo Flemister could save a recruiting class. Simply unbelievable that it got to that point at Notre Dame.
Ronald Talley was an absolute legend in Alumni Hall. Hoskins made a name for himself briefly, but just didn’t have as powerful a personality (or as deep a voice) as Talley.
I took Spanish with Mauricio and didn’t even realize who he was. Such a quiet guy.
That list of recruits makes ND look like a development program… I’m thinking along the lines BYU, Northwestern, Iowa State. You have to be at .90+ to be a four star recruit. I believe I counted 4 in that list, two of which barely make it.
I can’t help but think, most of those guys would be like option C or D under Freeman and his staff.
The names I remember watching are few… Sharpley, Grimes, Walker, Crum, McCarthy and Bruton.
The composite ratings here seem more harsh than I remember them being, although there’s no doubt that most of those classes were made up of 3-stars and not especially high ones. My recollection was that guys like Vernaglia and Lambert were 4-star players, and Walker had some bigger offers that belied his rating. He was definitely a recruit ND fans were dying to land at the time.
At the risk of coming off as rude, I suspect that most of these guys wouldn’t even be Plan C or D for ND under Freeman. They would have been PWO candidates. But, hey, I probably wouldn’t get admitted to ND today, either. No shame in it.
Bruton went to my high school (this was a dead zone for prep scouting for many, many years but has more recently developed Green Bay-via-OSU center Josh Myers and a couple other solid prospects) and was coached by one of my best friends on JV for two years but was barely noticeable even on a meager team. David then grew 6-7 inches in the next 9 months, grew into that new frame and became a serious two-way stud. He was the ultimate late-riser and the rating services in those days were not at all equipped to account for the player he really was leaving high school.
Also, not for nothing, but I believe that the “whooosh” RB was Munir Prince from St. Louis, who was one of Charlie’s.
Did I have the wrong whooosh!???
The WHOOSH was definitely Prince… Charlie also gave us bye week cheeseburgers, big muchachos, and thick, quick, and nasty – if nothing else he was proficient at sound bites.
Jabbie is the spring game legend, not the “whoosh” legend
This is what destroyed any chance Weis had to have good teams. It was one thing for him to take the veterans on the team and turn them into a decent team. And it’s one thing for him to recruit top classes. But, while maybe he could have done better in certain ways recruiting, it’s nearly impossible to overcome these 2 classes (which are basically a ZERO) when they are upperclassmen and supposed to be the core of the team (especially at positions where underclassmen don’t usually thrive like the OL).
It was almost inevitable then that Weis would fail ultimately. But thankfully he succeeded enough both on the recruiting trail and when the veterans were not these 2 classes that someone else could pick up the baton and continue the improvement.
There were a lot of things that went into Weiss not being able to be consistently successful. I remember reading one article where he basically stated he had zero interest in developing players or in strength and conditioning. He was used to the NFL where if the player wanted to be successful they took care of their bodies through the nutrition and food, workouts, proper rest, etc… Unfortunately the NFL model of player management doesn’t work in College football.
When he was at KU he mentioned how nice it was to be able to get JUCOs and transfers because they were more developed.
He was built for being an NFL coordinator where he could just focus on Xs and Os.
Yes, there were definitely other factors. But I’m not sure that if those other factors went away he could have succeeded with getting nothing from 2 whole classes(!).
These classes certainly tanked 2007 and 2008, but they don’t really explain why Weis was losing to Navy and UConn at home in 2009 with basically an NFL offense.
I played backyard football once against sharpley when I was 6th grade, he may have been in 7th or 8th? I’ve never been so thoroughly embarrassed or dominated by another human being in a sport.
But dude…. this is atrocious. I dont want to speak ill of any of these fellas, I’m sure they are excellent people, upstanding citizens, but like, from a competitive advantage. That ain’t it!
Does anyone in the 18s community have insights into holtz’ recruiting specifics in the late 80s early 90s? I know they were landing studs, but not sure how in depth one can go for the stories behind the stories there.
Sampson likes to tell an anecdote about Hotlz-era recruiting that illustrates how dominant ND was late 80’s/early 90’s. Basically, the story goes that one recruiting weekend group had Tyrone Wheatley, Devin Bush (Sr.), Derrick Brooks, and some other big name future NFLer I can’t remember. Anyway, ND doesn’t end up getting any of these guys of course, but it didn’t really matter cause apparently every recruiting visit weekend then was like that, just stacked with blue-chip future first round talent, and they knew they’d get a top class. So it was like they had a group with a Moore, a M’Pemba, a Young, and a Downs coming in every week back then.
Funny thing, I did a lot of Google searches on these guys. Many of them are extremely successful. Notre Dame treated most of them well it seems.
Not sure how much the administration would like anyone to go into depth… Suffice it to say that Notre Dame recruiting under Vinny Cerrato bore a close resemblance to modern elite recruiting in more than just the signing day results. Also the university didn’t get all that into who the program was bringing in, so they got some guys that wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell now. Start with Tony Rice and John Foley, who were Prop 48s, and continue to Chris Zorich, who (contrary to urban legend) wasn’t a Prop 48 but was nowhere near the qualifications of the student body at large.
There were other guys who didn’t remotely fit the, uh, non-academic profile of ND as well, either before or during their time on campus. I’m not here to blow anyone up but I’ve heard stories of peak Holtz era behavior that are Fulmer Cup worthy.
Basically Holtz and Cerrato had free reign to go after whoever they wanted, and they did – at least until the admin started paying attention, which is when Cerrato left and the recruiting success started to slowly fade. Kelly clearly landed too much on the other side with RKGs and shopping down a different aisle, not because the admin wouldn’t let him take some risks but (in hindsight) because he wasn’t that into putting the effort in to do better. Early days on Freeman, granted, but he seems to be very much between the two extremes.
The job done by Willingham and the administration is impressively unimpressive. This just goes to show how broken the school was from 1994 to 2004 when Jenkins was announced president -elect and then finally when Kevin White left (I know people hate Jack and Jenkins).
Talk about a complete abandonment of duties by everyone at the school to allow this to happen. The youngest coach, Wilks, brought in McCarthy & Bruton and helped close Lambert so you could credit him with that commit as well as he committed on signing day 2004.
It’s infuriating to think about how poor Kevin White and Malloy and the administration were at their job when you could argue it was more important than ever to have strong, forward thinking leadership. College Football experienced such drastic change from 1990 to 2005 from the sums of money, style of play, recruiting, and overall importance schools were placing on the sport and ND was literally driving in reverse on the interstate as cars passed them going 95.
I remember there being discussion /news articles around that time about how ND football had become to influential and that it needed to be deemphasized and given less power. Or maybe this was the end of the Holtz era.
However I’m thinking that Alumni like to see winners, the more winners you have (especially in high profile sports) the more they are willing to open checkbooks. ND football being mediocre is not good for ND.
If the influence of any particular program becomes that great, I don’t think it is a program issue as much as a leadership issue or lack there of. Kevin White was a terrible A.D. and I wonder about the leadership of Edward Malloy, although he did institute the change of having the AD report directly to the president. Holtz was hired under Hesburgh’s leadership. Weiss was the first hire under Jenkins I believe, however with White as the AD. Jenkins 2nd hire was Kelly, but with Jack Swarbrick in place as AD.
I think that combination of Malloy and White was terrible for ND athletics. White is responsible for the hiring of George O’Leary (how did this happen?) and Tyrone Willingham.
My recollection is that Malloy hijacked the process once the O’Leary debacle unfolded and made a bee-line to Willingham. He was quite taken in those days with burnishing ND’s academic rep at the expense of everything else, and the idea of hiring Stanford’s HC appealed to him for that reason.
I realize that Weis didn’t ultimately work out for us, but can you imagine if Jenkins and others hadn’t stepped in when they did to say ‘enough is enough’? Even one more year of Willingham on & off the field given his trajectory would have been functionally equivalent to the death penalty. I can’t say precisely how that timeline would have played out, but I doubt it ends with ND going undefeated and playing in a BCS title game less than 10 years later.
Indeed. There’s plenty to be said about Jenkins and not all of it is good, but I’ll always be grateful to him for having the guts to do the (nationally at least) unpopular thing when Malloy was too “embarrassed” (his word, not mine) to do so.
I don’t remember its specific temporal relationship with the Willingham hiring, but around that time is when Fr. Malloy described Stanford as an “aspirational peer.” Fr. Hesburgh once wrote an op-ed in response to some hand-wringing over Notre Dame “surrendering” its values to pursue football glory, in which he said that there was no academic virtue in losing a game you should win and no academic vice in a winning a game that you should lose. He closed it by saying yes, there has been a surrender at Notre Dame – a surrender to excellence in all endeavors.
One of those presidents saw the university rise to national prominence as an academic and social institution and collect three national championships along the way. The other very nearly cratered the most storied program in college athletics.
We’re fortunate that Notre Dame football survived the Kevin White era. The football malpractice that was tolerated at ND during the 2000s is astounding in retrospect. The O’Leary fiasco, forcing Jenkins to fire Willingham, extending Weis after 5 games and not putting an offset in his buyout — any of these alone should have cost White his job but he just kept truckin’ along. I think we were close to going into a programmatic death spiral like you see at Nebraska and Miami these days.
And just imagine if White was still around to navigate the conference realignment of the last decade. We’d be in a B1G division with Iowa State, Maryland, and Purdue.
Does anybody else remember playing NCAA 05 or so, and thinking, “This is a rough team, I’m glad we can just coach these guys up, recruit some ballers, and win the National Championship in 2 years. DJ HORD GONNA BE A STUUUDDD!”
Oh my god that game LOVED DJ Hord. He was the star of my national championship games against Rutgers and UNC.
Kind of funny that DJ Hord is more famous for his play in NCAA football than his actual results on the field. Maybe he would of cleaned up in his recruiting NIL in todays world.
Apropos of nothing, I was looking at the upcoming schedule. A few notes/questions:
To your first point, ND played 4 ACC opponents in 2014, the first year of the deal, and 6 in 2015. ND unsuccessfully tried to get out of the @ Arizona State game at the onset of the ACC deal (having already canceled the planned 2017 home game in what was supposed to be a Shamrock/home/home series).
I suspect without much evidence that ND made some inquiries about moving UNLV to “Week Zero” – UNLV plays @ Hawaii and is therefore eligible to play that week – but UNLV elected to play an FCS opponent that week instead. The schedule was released abnormally late, so that’s what led to my skepticism. 10/22 then would’ve been a well-positioned second bye week. Didn’t work out.
The ACC scheduling can be uneven with no logical rhyme or reason, but I think it all evens out eventually. The next two ND/Clemson games after this year (2023, 2027) are @Clemson, for instance. Assuming Clemson is still in the ACC by then.
UVA makes two straight trips to ND in 2024 and 2026 with no ND @ UVA game until 2031. There hasn’t been NC State/ND since 2017 and won’t happen again until 2023. There hasn’t been a ND/Syracuse game since 2018, there is one this year, and won’t be another until 2025. ND/Wake play every single year (just kidding, only feels that way). Just quirks of how they fit it together, I suppose.
“There hasn’t been a ND/Syracuse game since 2018, there is one this year, and won’t be another until 2025.”
Funny, I had the same thought – the 2018 game was the Yankee Stadium Shamrock Series, and before that, ND hadn’t hosted Syracuse since 2008 (#allegedly).
But no, final game of the 2020 season, Syracuse came to South Bend. Might have been the game where, like, 3 Syracuse QBs combined to go 4-35 for 26 yards or something stupid like that.
Tragic news as Paul Duncan passed away on Friday while out on a run in his neighborhood.