By Bob Chmiel
The home stretch is gruesome for recruiting coaches, and it is that way for a lot of reasons. First, they have been at this process for a long time. There is a significant amount of time spent away from home due to travel, and by the time the coaches get back to campus on Thursday evening or Friday morning, they must immediately get ready for an official visit weekend, which for the coaches is basically a 48-hour dead run.
The weekend in itself can be taxing, because there is just so much to do, such as entertain the parents of your recruit, which often entails having most of your meals with them, as well as meeting with the recruit and his parents in a one on one setting. The coaches will generally meet with all of the recruits who are visiting that weekend who play the specific position that they coach. Along with all of that, there are staff meetings to continually gather information about the prospects that are on campus:
Do they seem to be enjoying the visit?
Are the young man's parents pro-Notre Dame?
What is the competition and why?
And when the weekend is finally wrapped up and the prospects leave, there is yet another very important meeting to determine, basically, who goes where the following week. At that time, the program’s travel agent sends in a representative to begin making flight plans, hotel arrangements, rental car reservations, etc. Now, the critical decisions are made as to where the head coach should be going and why. When that meeting is over, the coaches may actually go home, pack for the next week and perhaps even leave on Sunday night.....and start all over again!
At this time, also, tempers can become short, and that may be for a myriad of reasons. Perhaps a "new" school enters into the picture, or perhaps the head coach just does not understand why you have not received a commitment from a particular individual. Coaches who are struggling begin to worry.
Specifically, is there negative recruiting against Notre Dame? Sure! Everybody gives Notre Dame their best shot, and there is no greater joy than some assistant coach walking into the head coach’s office to tell him that he just beat out Notre Dame for a prospect. It is the ultimate recruiting prize for most assistant coaches. The negative recruiters become known by reputation, and when you are going head to head with one of these jokers you must know the landscape, and you must inform the recruit and his parents that this just might happen.
While I was at Notre Dame a particular assistant who then worked at a Big Ten school was really disrespecting Coach Holtz. This particular assistant was also using information that had to have come from inside our office. I immediately went to inform Coach Holtz who "handled" the situation. He spoke to the "alleged informant" about his pal north of the border.
Recently, the internet and the immediate information on the internet have changed recruiting, radically. There are no secrets! There are no "sleepers!" And, there is so much false information and speculation. Anything you say can and will be used against you. It may not be the total reason a recruit changes his mind, but it could be the tipping point.
One afternoon, Bob Davie called me in asked me why I told a guy on an airplane - en route to Memphis - who we were recruiting in Memphis. I responded by letting Davie know that the only thing I told the guy was, "Yes, I am Bob Chmiel, and I am in Memphis recruiting." What did this kid think I was doing in Memphis in January, visiting Graceland?
I asked Davie where he came up with this information. He said someone found it on the internet. I asked him on which site, but what he did not know. It was brought to him by a Notre Dame assistant athletic director, who was also a recruiting coordinator from many years ago and must have had an agenda.
That night I called this joker - nervous as he was - and he immediately ran over to the football office, but I had little to do with him.
Sure, there are changes in commitments but nothing like what we’ve seen the past five or six weeks, absolutely nothing! This would occur from time to time, but you could almost see it coming. This topic could probably have volumes written about it.
A wise, wise high school athletic director at Fenwick H.S., the great Anthony R. Lawless, once told me, "Kids have never changed. It is the people that handle them that have changed." I’ll defer to that assessment and trust his judgment.
Finally, when it came to the evaluation process, I always felt that visiting the nine other offices (the academic offices) down the hall gave us the best chance to recruit the right individuals to Notre Dame. Ten or eleven professional opinions on our staff were the most reliable means to determine the success of an individual at our school.
Do some of the services do a great job? Are they a good reference or starting point? Yes and Yes!
Source: www.blueandgold.com
