With the unofficial kickoff to summer upon us, we’re inside 100 days until football is back. That may seem like quite a long time, but we’ve got plenty of ground to cover in the next few months as we get a better look at what the 2013 Fighting Irish will be.
Before everybody disappears for a long holiday weekend, let’s run through a few links that caught my attention over the past few days:
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First and foremost the Eddie Vanderdoes situation continues to be confusing. A few days ago, ESPN’s Joe Schad got in on the action, tweeting the following:
Those comments spread like wild fire across the internet, with any supposed side of the story still not coming out of anyone in the Vanderdoes camp. Of course, there aren’t too many option for Vanderdoes since he signed his letter-of-intent, and it doesn’t appear Notre Dame has any intentions of letting him back out of his commitment.
Defensive line coach Mike Elston, who will handling Vanderdoes’ development on a day-to-day basis spoke about the incoming freshman defensive linemen and mentioned the bright future the staff still believes Vanderdoes has in South Bend.
“We signed an excellent class of defensive linemen,” Elston told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette this week.
“I’m excited about coaching those guys that we signed, and Eddie being one of them. I’m excited about him reporting in June with his classmates, and I can’t wait to develop him into an excellent football player.”
Speaking to a source close to the UCLA football program, the Bruins staff believes that if it were up to Vanderdoes and his family, he’d be in Westwood come this summer. How that came to be? That’s still in question, but while the Irish have a signed letter-of-intent, don’t expect them to walk away from it.
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Brian Hamilton of the Chicago Tribune did some digging into Notre Dame’s financial disclosures and came across another big payment to former Irish head coach Charlie Weis. Fired three seasons after signing a ten-year extension to coach the Irish, Weis’ lastest pay-out took him past the $10 million mark.
Here’s more from the Trib:
Weis received another buyout payment of $2,054,744 as part of the separation agreement for his firing in 2009, bringing the total amount paid to the ousted Irish coach and current Kansas head coach to nearly $10.8 million, according to federal tax documents the school provided the Tribune on Thursday.
It is the second consecutive payment of $2,054,744 to Weis after the initial payment of $6,638,403 after his firing. The university is scheduled for “additional annual payments” through Dec. 2015, so four more installments of the same $2 million-plus figure would bring the total to $18,966,867.
Other numbers of note that caught my attention is the $1.4 million Mike Brey makes and the impressive $1.14 million. that Muffet McGraw pulls in. Athletic director Jack Swarbrick made a reported $1.08 million.
If the Irish do end up paying the full ticket amount of the remaining years on Weis’ contract, former Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White should take his place among the very worst contract negotiators in all of sports.
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Tyler James of the South Bend Tribune took a look at the Irish trying to reestablish a footprint in Louisiana, one of the most talent rich locations in the country. Co-defensive coordinator Kerry Cooks and recruiting coordinator and running backs coach Tony Alford are trying their best to take advantage of the Irish’s exceptional 2012 and make up some ground.
James caught up with John Curtis head coach JT Curtis, who talked about the changes in recruiting the Bayou State.
“Notre Dame recruited here a good bit in the past, but in the last five, eight, 10 years or so they really haven’t been terribly active here,” Curtis told James. “This is a little bit of a change.”
“We’ve had contact with them through the years. They’ve just never really been that actively involved,” Curtis said. “That might just be through the evaluation process. College recruiting is all about evaluation, and it’s not an easy process to go through.
It’s been almost 15 years since Notre Dame signed cornerback Albert Poree from Louisiana, only to see him transfer out after just a season. But with a return to college football’s very good (I’m not ready to say elite), taking another shot at one of the country’s most talent rich states — especially after their recent success in Georgia and the Carolinas — only makes sense.
