Category: Notre Dame

Former Notre Dame player put his recruiting hat on trying to lure Ohio offensive tackle

Will the twin’s follow in their high school alums footsteps?

It’s not just the [autotag]Notre Dame[/autotag] football staff that is working social media to help recruit for the Irish, sometimes former players get into the mix especially when the recruits are from their former high school.

That’s exactly the case with former Irish safety [autotag]Shaun Crawford[/autotag] and twins [autotag]Devontae Armstrong[/autotag] and [autotag]Deontae Armstrong[/autotag]. Each of them have an offer from Notre Dame and they currently attend [autotag]Lakewood St. Edward High School[/autotag], which is where Crawford prepped.

What spurred Crawford to put his recruiting hat on was when Deontae shared a recruiting edit of himself in Columbus, as Ohio State recently offered both of them. The former Irish player noted that South Bend isn’t far from home, and [autotag]Harry Hiestand[/autotag] would be their offensive line coach.

This most likely won’t push either Armstrong over the edge, but Crawford is an example of a St. Ed’s player having success outside of Ohio, specifically at Notre Dame.

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Former Notre Dame Athletic Director Gene Corrigan Dead at Age 91

Gene Corrigan is responsible for hiring perhaps the two best coaches in Notre Dame’s recent history in Lou Holtz and Muffet McGraw.

One of my favorite things that has happened since I took over managing Fighting Irish Wire back in October is that things you thought you were aware of or hip to get magnified ten-fold.

That could be assistant coaches being hired or fired, recruiting information or simply something from the history of Notre Dame.

I’ll be honest here (I always am but that’s a way to transition myself out of my comfort zone a bit):

I had no idea who Gene Corrigan was until his death at 91 years old was announced Saturday.

Some quick research helped me discover he wasn’t just the former commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, but was Notre Dame’s athletic director from 1981 to 1987.

That made me realize that hey, Gene Corrigan is responsible for hiring perhaps the two best coaches in Notre Dame’s recent history in Lou Holtz and Muffet McGraw.

I had no idea that Corrigan had three children graduate from the University of Notre Dame, or that one of them, Kevin, had been the lacrosse coach at Notre Dame since 1998.

It’s fascinating to read about a man who graduated from Duke in 1952 then got his start in coaching by leading the basketball, soccer and lacrosse teams of Washington and Lee in 1955.

From there he took a job at the University of Virginia where he spent time again coaching a variety of sports before becoming athletic director at Washington and Lee.

That led him again to Virginia where he was athletic director for a decade before a decade before he took the Notre Dame A-D job, replacing the legendary Edward “Moose” Krause.

I also didn’t know until reading Eric Hansen’s piece Saturday that Lou Holtz was anything but a knockout hire at his time and had been coming off a 6-5 season at Minnesota at the time of his hiring.

Corrigan would go on to commission the ACC after leaving Notre Dame in 1987 through 1995 when he became president of the NCAA.

Corrigan clearly lived an incredible life and oversaw the Notre Dame athletic department at an incredibly fascinating time.

Even if I didn’t know anything about him a day ago, he impact on Notre Dame athletics is clearly without end.

All the best to those who knew him and if you’re like me and didn’t even know of him until now, here’s to hoping you also learned a bit about his important legacy to Notre Dame and college sports.

Notre Dame football offers Utah 2024 safety

The Irish are early to offer a fast-rising safety

[autotag]Notre Dame[/autotag] football has plenty of ammo when trying to convince a secondary recruit that South Bend is the right place for them. Freshman [autotag]Ben Morrison[/autotag] is coming off an All-American season while former Irish safety [autotag]Kyle Hamilton[/autotag] just finished off an impressive first year with the [autotag]Baltimore Ravens[/autotag].

With that in mind, head coach [autotag]Marcus Freeman[/autotag] and safeties coach [autotag]Chris O’Leary[/autotag] offered Utah safety [autotag]Davis Andrews[/autotag] today.

The six-foot-three-inch and 195-pound player could eventually outgrow the position and end up as a linebacker, but he currently fits the mold of the big safeties that Notre Dame likes to deploy at the back end of their defense.

The Irish offer is Andrews first big one, as he was previously offered by [autotag]Stanford[/autotag], [autotag]BYU[/autotag], [autotag]Arizona[/autotag] and a few others. Expect Notre Dame to be players for his signature later this year.

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Mike Brey’s 23 best players at Notre Dame

Who is your starting five?

After 23 seasons as Notre Dame’s head coach, Mike Brey hits the stretch run of his career under “Three-Point Jesus.” It will not end with a run into March as we sit in late January with the Irish having one ACC victory. Though not a storybook ending for Brey, it certainly was a storybook career.

It’s easy to get caught up in what’s going on this year and wonder about the big picture of Notre Dame basketball in the weeks and months to come.  Those questions will certainly remain for some time, but the struggle of 2022-23 isn’t representative of what Brey helped Notre Dame accomplish.

In honor of Brey’s 23 seasons at Notre Dame, I decided to put together a list of the best 23 players he coached with the Irish. Let me tell you, this was a task I thought was going to be much easier before I started writing it.

As we near the end of Year 23 for Mike Brey at Notre Dame, here are the 23 best players to play for him.

5-star Notre Dame target will not announce his commitment at end of January

An interesting development here

When Illinois five-star defensive tackle [autotag]Justin Scott[/autotag] announced he planned to commit on the 31st of January, it looked like he was a lock to make his pledge to [autotag]Notre Dame[/autotag].

Just by reading into what Scott was doing — visiting South Bend days before his announcement — observers believed it was almost a forgone conclusion he would commit to Notre Dame and [autotag]Marcus Freeman[/autotag].

The Irish, along with Scott’s other finalists, will have to wait a bit longer to find out where the talented defensive lineman plans to play his college football. On Tuesday, Scott went to Twitter and announced he will not announce his pledge in a week and is postponing his “commitment until further notice.”

At this point it’s hard to read what Scott might do, but multiple insiders believed until today that he was headed to South Bend. It’s another roller-coaster recruitment that should seem normal as this point if you follow closely.

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247Sports says Notre Dame football could crash the College Football Playoff party

Hype helps

The second year of [autotag]Marcus Freeman[/autotag]’s tenure with [autotag]Notre Dame[/autotag] football is shaping up to be a very prosperous one. After a first full season in which the Irish won 9 games, including the [autotag]TaxSlayer Gator Bowl[/autotag], the program is on the rise once again.

The offseason addition of quarterback [autotag]Sam Hartman[/autotag] shores up the quarterback spot, and Notre Dame will return plenty of talent from the 2022 team. With that in mind, Brandon Marcello of 247Sports took a look a which teams could crash the [autotag]College Football Playoff[/autotag] field this fall, and Notre Dame was selected.

Now, I’m not sure crashing is the appropriate term for the Irish, given they have make it to the playoff in two of the last five years. But what is important is people believe the program has a chance. Marcello explained “Notre Dame has the talent to compete for a spot in the College Football Playoff in 2023 and they have a quarterback with a championship pedigree to get them there.”

I see a bunch of factors what could contribute to making the field that Marcello explained above, ones that should excite Notre Dame fans for what is to come this year. All the pieces are there for the Irish to make another run at a playoff spot.

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Notre Dame football offers NFL Hall of Famer’s son

Will he have a similar career path as his father?

The [autotag]Notre Dame[/autotag] football staff loves offering players with [autotag]NFL[/autotag] bloodlines and this recent offer sure has the flavor. Head coach [autotag]Marcus Freeman[/autotag] has a previous relationship for [autotag]NFL Hall of Fame[/autotag] linebacker [autotag]Brian Urlacher[/autotag]. They were teammates in 2009, both of them in the same position group playing for the Chicago Bears.

The familiarity with the family has led the Irish to offer a scholarship to [autotag]Kennedy Urlacher[/autotag], Brian’s son. The younger Urlacher doesn’t play the same position as his father, Kennedy is a safety, which is the same spot his dad played with at [autotag]New Mexico[/autotag] before a transition to linebacker with the Bears.

The offer from Notre Dame isn’t Kenney’s first Power-5 offer but you can argue that it is his biggest up-to-date.

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Where each 2023 Notre Dame signee landed on ESPN’s final recruiting class update

The Irish class is loaded with talent

The first full class for [autotag]Marcus Freeman[/autotag] should be viewed at as a booming success for [autotag]Notre Dame[/autotag] football. Not only did the Irish fill holes but they created a lot of depth across every position group. It was extremely impressive for the first-time head coach.

Today, ESPN released their final update to the 2023 recruiting cycle and there was plenty of Irish signees that were named on their list. Even though there weren’t any players ranked inside the top 50, Notre Dame players were still all around the list.

Find out below which Fighting Irish signees made ESPN’s final top 300 list.

Report: Top Notre Dame target will visit just a few days ahead of commitment date

Will the Irish lock up a verbal after the visit?

The [autotag]Notre Dame[/autotag] football staff has to be ecstatic about the recent events surrounding Illinois 5-star defensive tackle [autotag]Justin Scott[/autotag].

The big man was set to visit South Bend this weekend but a report from [autotag]247Sports Tom Loy[/autotag] has Scott pushing back his visit to the final weekend of January, just days ahead of Scott’s birthday and commitment day.

This is a very good sign for [autotag]Marcus Freeman[/autotag] and the Irish, especially considering that multiple other commits might be on campus that weekend with him. Quarterback commit [autotag]CJ Carr[/autotag] is leading the charge and looks to be on campus while Scott is there.

At the current moment, all signs look very positive for Scott to join the 2024 Notre Dame football recruiting class.

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Notre Dame Football keeps offers going, more out today to big time prospects

Some new, some old, all Irish offers

At this point, it is getting really hard to keep track of who [autotag]Notre Dame[/autotag] Football is offering. Over this past week there have been multiple offers out to high school stars and they keep coming.

Head coach [autotag]Marcus Freeman[/autotag] and his staff are putting in the hard work. It has yet to pay off but they are setting themselves up for future success.

I’ve been doing my best to find these offers and let you know about them, but some have been lost in the action. Here are the most recent offers that have gone out today and any of the ones that we may have missed over the past days.