Notre Dame Football: Irish recruiting has fallen on hard times
Notre Dame football has one top-5 recruiting class in the last 10 years. That needs to change if the Irish want to return to the National Championship Game.
Notre Dame football is five seasons removed from their appearance in the 2013 BCS National Championship Game. Since that time the Irish have struggled to bring in elite recruiting classes and the results have spoken for themselves.
The Irish are 32-19 since their drubbing by Alabama on national television. Although they were able to bring in the No. 5 class following that 11-2 season the Irish have skirted the fringes of the top 10 ever since. It takes talent, elite-talent, to compete for national championships.
Notre Dame brought in the No. 2 recruiting class in 2008 and the No. 5 class in 2013. Other than that it’s been fairly pedestrian on the recruiting front for Notre Dame for the better part of a decade. The prestige and presence of the university will keep the Irish from ever falling too far down the rankings, but there’s a threshold of talent that the Irish simply haven’t been able to maintain.
Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, Florida State, Clemson. What do those programs have in common? They’ve all had multiple top-8 recruiting classes since the College Football Playoff began in 2014. All six of those schools have had the chance to compete for a national title. Notre Dame has not.
Here’s how Notre Dame football has fared on the recruiting trail since 2014:
- 2014: No. 10
- 2015: No. 13
- 2016: No. 15
- 2017: No. 10
- 2018: No. 10
Instead of competing for titles, the Irish have found themselves in the same stratus as LSU. The Tigers have four top-5 recruiting finishes in that span but just a 34-16 overall record. If the Irish aren’t careful, they’ll get stuck in the same pattern, but with a little less talent.
Next: Ranking every Irish position group entering 2018
Notre Dame has been close, but not quite close enough. If that doesn’t change, there’s not much reason to believe Brian Kelly will be able to produce better results on the field going forward.