Weekend notes: Swarbrick, Watch Lists, Life after Floyd, and more

You can’t blame Jack Swarbrick for taking a vacation. With his work helping to put together a college football playoff done, Swarbrick and his family took a much needed vacation. But that didn’t stop word getting out that Notre Dame was in discussions with the ACC about in-roads to the Orange Bowl.

Earlier in the week, Notre Dame’s John Heisler confirmed discussions.

“Since the development of the new plan for post-season football, the ACC and Notre Dame have had discussions relating to the Orange Bowl,” Heisler said. “While presidents have been consulted, the discussions have been between ACC conference staff and Jack.”

With the bowl system obviously in the midst of a shake-up after the playoff is instituted during the 2014 season, Notre Dame is deadset on correcting a situation that has the Irish awfully scarce on bowl opportunities outside of the BCS.

Yet reports that Notre Dame has set out to commandeer the bowl game as partners with the ACC might be a little far fetched, as Jack Swarbrick acknowledged earlier this week, during an interview with local NBC affiliate WNDU.

“I think there’s been a little bit of misunderstanding with all of that,” Swarbrick told Jeff Jeffers. “It’s been portrayed as a Notre Dame discussion or somebody else’s discussion but it’s much more a collective effort to structure something that has a solution for the other side of the Orange Bowl. “So a lot of us are engaged in that,” Swarbrick continued. “It isn’t limited to Notre Dame. We’re making progress but there’s more work to be done.”

Regardless, it’s a proactive step in the right direction for Notre Dame, who already used their exemption into the Champs Sports Bowl and have limited bowl options right now for years they don’t qualify for the BCS.
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It’s that time of year again. Watch List time, where dozens of good players are included on a list trying to anticipate postseason awards. It’s a bit silly, but certainly a nice honor for some of the better football players in the country.

Let’s run the list of Irish players getting mentioned:

Manti Te’o - Lott Trophy, Bednarik Award, Nagurski Award,
Braxston Cave - Rimington Trophy, Outland Trophy,
Tyler Eifert - Mackey Award, Maxwell Award
Zack Martin - Outland Trophy,
Kapron Lewis-Moore - Nagurski Award,
Cierre Wood - Maxwell Award

The list for the Lombardi, Butkus, Biletnikoff, Davey O’Brien, Doak Walker, and Walter Camp awards have yet to be released, but this should get you up to speed.

It’s worth noting that Eifert is the only tight end on the list for the Maxwell Award.
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As the Irish offense tries to figure out how to live life after Michael Floyd, Blue & Gold’s Lou Somogyi did a great job pointing out that the Irish have a pretty good track record of rebounding after losing a key offensive player.

Here’s Lou’s top three examples over the past 25 years:

1. How Now Without Brown?
1987: Senior Tim Brown won the Heisman Trophy during an 8-4 season and was the No. 6 pick in the NFL Draft.
1988: Although no one on the 1988 team caught more than 16 passes, the Irish improved to 12-0 to win the national title.

2. Backfield In Motion
1992 : The star-studded backfield for the 10-1-1 team featured No. 2 NFL pick Rick Mirer at quarterback, 5th-place Heisman finisher Reggie Brooks at tailback, and junior fullback Jerome “The Bus” Bettis went pro early as the No. 10 pick.
1993: The unheralded trio of quarterback Kevin McDougal, tailback Lee Becton and fullback Ray Zellars emerged superbly while the Irish finished 11-1 and No. 2.

3. Action Even Without Jackson
1999: QB Jarious Jackson broke Joe Theismann’s 29-year school record for most passing yards in a season (2,753) and was the second leading rusher with 464 yards. Alas, the Irish also committed 30 turnovers and finished 5-7.
2000: When freshman QB Matt LoVecchio was thrown into the fire, Notre Dame averaged 74 yards less per game than with Jackson — but it committed an NCAA record low eight turnovers to finish 9-2 and earn a BCS bid. The efficiency, resourcefulness and team play of 2000 is a good template for the 2012 Irish to follow after the 2011 unit averaged 413 yards per game (similar to 1999) but committed 29 turnovers (similar to 1999).

The days are likely over of a team winning a national championship with no receiver catching more than 16 balls, but an optimist could make a good argument that losing Floyd will help keep the Irish offensive attack more balanced.

Notre Dame will still have its instant mismatch, with Tyler Eifert moving all around the field. But the Irish’s reliance on Floyd last season might have handicapped a quick strike, vertically driven offense Irish fans have been expecting to see since Brian Kelly came from Cincinnati.
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A few final tidbits on recent Irish commitment Justin Brent, who is set to sign in the ’14 class. We’ll find out how good Brent is during his junior season, a breakthrough year for most high school players.

Even if we don’t know just how high Brent’s ceiling is yet, a year ago football was almost an afterthought for the Indianapolis athlete. Focused on his basketball career, Brent almost gave up on football completely, with the 6-foot-3 point guard drawing interesting from heavyweights like Indiana, Purdue, Georgetown, Marquette, and others.

“I’ve been playing basketball my whole life and I’ve also played football my whole life, but I think basketball is where it’s at,” Brent told InsideTheHall.com last July. “With football, I was contemplating not even playing this year, but I guess a lot of coaches like an athlete that play two sports and plus I just like it a lot to play. But I was always nervous about the fact that I could receive an injury. But I’m going to stay with it. College wise, I’ve gotten one letter from Texas A & M and it was just a questionnaire, but that’s the only thing I’ve gotten for football. I don’t think I see myself playing football in college, I think it’s basketball.”

Good thing for all involved that Brent decided to stick with football during his sophomore season. The athleticism that had college basketball coaches taking notice will undoubtedly help Brent on the gridiron.