CB Christian Gray makes the grade for Notre Dame in more ways than one
At the very top of his dream board — an actual thing Christian Gray and his mom, Shonda, created to manifest his goals — is a number.
“Three-point-eight,” the elite cornerback prospect, signing a National Letter of Intent with Notre Dame Wednesday, rattled off to Inside ND Sports recently.
As in NIL?
“As in my GPA my freshman year in college,” the 6-foot, 174-pound St. Louis De Smet senior countered, with that journey starting in less than a month as a mid-year enrollee on Jan. 17.
Not that Name, Image and Likeness figures weren’t thrown in his face during a recruiting process that essentially ended July 4, when Gray verbally committed to the Irish over fellow finalists LSU, Ohio State and USC and 23 other schools that extended offers.
“When NIL did come up, and come up first, in my conversations with schools,” Gray said, “I was like, ‘Hmm. That’s crazy. Let’s put that aside and see what else you got.’ Because here’s how I look at it.
“With Name, Image and Likeness, you know you’re going to get some money automatically. But the money they talk about guaranteeing — like you’re going to get $2 million, $4 million if you go here — well it’s not guaranteed. Nothing is guaranteed until you step on that field.
“So I was like, ‘I’m not really worried about NIL. Just talk to me about education.’ I love the game too much just to think about the money of it.”
Also on Gray’s dream board for his freshman year in college is showing off his advanced chef skills that he learned from watching Shonda in the kitchen and the Food Network on TV.
“Fettuccine is my signature dish,” he said. “It’s so good that there’s going to be a lot of people who want to be my roommate.”
Staying humble is also on the list, something that comes off more consistently and apparently when Gray is not talking about his cooking.
And freshman All-America honors is on the board too, something that lines up as a possibility with Gray’s recruiting pedigree as the nation’s No. 78 player overall and No. 10 cornerback in the latest Rivals 2023 national recruiting rankings.
The other cornerback in the Irish class, fellow four-star prospect Micah Bell from Houston, is similarly ranked (No. 141). And both are well ahead of Georgia-bound Justyn Rhett from Las Vegas Bishop Gorman High, who committed to and mutually decommitted from the Irish early in the recruiting cycle and who plummeted 137 spots to No. 210 in the latest player rankings.
Gray and Bell, meanwhile, give the Irish four four-stars in the two most recent recruiting cycles, following 2022’s Jaden Mickey and Benjamin Morrison, the latter a freshman All-American this season and already a close friend of Gray.
“That’s my dog. That’s my brother right there,” Gray said. “Sometimes we text. Sometimes we talk, just to tell each other life stories. We also send each other inspirational quotes and everything. That’s what I do, and I read them before games. He does it too.”
Notre Dame has been good at developing its many three-star prospects during the Marcus Freeman/Brian Kelly head coaching years, with Julian Love rising to consensus All-America status in 2018. But Rivals national director of recruiting Adam Gorney is among the analysts who believe what has separated the Irish from teams that have reached the College Football Playoff and those that win games on that stage is raw talent and depth of talent at quarterback, wide receiver and cornerback.
In Gray and Bell, Notre Dame has more Rivals top 150 players in one class at the cornerback position than in the previous seven Irish classes combined. And Gray at No. 78 is the highest-ranked cornerback to sign with ND since Tee Shepard in 2012.
Shepard never actually played for the Irish, having been flagged for academic inconsistencies by the NCAA Clearinghouse after enrolling at Notre Dame in January of 2012 but never making it to his first spring practice with the Irish.
Among the corners who actually played at ND, you’d have to go back to Darrin Walls in 2006 as one with a higher ranking than Gray — No. 51 overall and an early contributor.
Rivals national analyst Adam Friedman believes Gray and Bell could make an early — if not immediate — impact as well and significantly upgrade the position, along with Mickey and Morrison.
“Tremendously and without a doubt,” Friedman said on this week’s Inside ND Sports Podcast. “Christian Gray, I’ve been very high on for a while. We’ve known about Christian Gray for years. We’re big fans of his, and we think he’ll shine early for Notre Dame in the defensive backfield.
“When this (12-team playoff) comes — and Notre Dame (is) probably going to be in the playoff more consistently than not — they’re going to come against some offenses with really high-powered outside receivers. And you’re going to need cornerbacks like these guys (Gray and Bell) who are big and fast and experienced against some top-end guys.
“These guys are not unfamiliar with big, important wide receivers, from the 7-on-7 circuit in the offseason. They’ve come across these guys before. Playing on the field under the bright lights in college is going to be a little bit different animal. But these guys have the skill sets and experience to be able to hit the ground running almost and not be caught up in the moment.”
Perhaps almost as compelling as what the future might look like at cornerback for Notre Dame is the recent past at the position group and why the Irish struggled to attract top talent.
Prior to the 2022 cycle, when Freeman joined the staff as defensive coordinator, Notre Dame signed 18 three-star prospects at the position and just nine four-stars since 2010 — Kelly’s first recruiting cycle at Notre Dame.
Fourteen of those 27 transferred. The Irish whiffed on cornerbacks completely in ND’s 2017 class that was formed during the 4-8 cratering on the field in 2016. Paulson Adebo and Elijah Hicks decommitted from that class and signed with Stanford and Cal, respectively.
Even in ND’s 2012 run to the national championship game, its starting cornerbacks were two converted offensive players — Bennett Jackson and KeiVarae Russelll.
“It’s taken the combination of (cornerbacks coach) Mike Mickens and Marcus Freeman to get Notre Dame to this point of getting top-end talent that wasn’t hit and miss,” offered Tom Lemming, longtime recruiting analyst and publisher of the Prep Football Report.
“There have been too many assistant coaches in the past who believed Notre Dame would recruit itself at that position. It doesn’t. They didn’t work hard enough at that position, and it showed up and came back to bite Notre Dame way too often.”
Notre Dame’s last consensus All-America cornerback before Julian Love, Shane Walton in 2002, came to Notre Dame as a soccer player and before Gray was born.
The sketchy Irish history at the position or even ND’s overall lustrous football lore didn’t really factor into the allure for Gray, however.
“It was just the love and the atmosphere that I’d never seen at any of the other colleges I visited — Alabama, Ohio State,” he said. “I didn’t see that type of love ever except at Notre Dame.
“When they tell me my education is most important, that’s what I like to hear. Me and my mom, we go way back with education. And the part about the Golden Standard, I love the Golden Standard and what it means and it’s bigger than any one of us.
“It’s just a standard that we live by — in the office, on the field, in school. So yeah, that’s what I love living by. It’s a standard. They have a standard, a big standard that you’ve got to go by. And education has been important since the day I was born.”
Some of that is Shonda’s influence, with a long background in education. Some might be sibling rivalry. “My big-brain sister, Lael, is a sophomore at Ohio State,” he says.
Most of it is his big-picture thinking.
“Football may last only a few years,” Gray said. “You have an injury, that’s it. But education never ends. It’s going to impact your life, your whole entire way of living.”
Gray learned a lot too by watching Freeman’s ups and downs as a first-year head coach. He was at Notre Dame Stadium for upset losses to Marshall and Stanford as well as signature moments like the rout of top 10 Clemson and the snow-globe shutout of Boston College in November.
“The 0-2 start, the loss to Stanford in October, it is what it is. That’s a part of the game,” he said. “I went through the ups and downs with them, and I’m like, ‘I’m still committed. It’s not going to change me if you take an L or not.’
“What matters is are you going to grow from it or not? Coach Freeman and the players did that. So, it was easy for me to live with.”
Maybe the hardest part of Gray’s recruiting ride was separating Notre Dame from LSU at the end of the decision process. Shortly after Brian Kelly left Notre Dame after 12 seasons as its head coach on Nov. 30, 2021, he hired De Smet head coach Robert Steeples to be the Tigers’ cornerbacks coach.
“After I decided I was going to Notre Dame, it took me like two weeks to talk to him about not going to LSU,” Gray said. “I had to find a way to talk about that. It was heartbreaking, but he understands the situation and he wants me to be great.”
And in between every line on Gray’s dream board is the implication that he wants the same.
“I don’t care how much talent you think you’re blessed with,” Gray said. “If you don’t work harder than everybody else, you’re not going to reach your goals.
“That’s the love about the game. You want to be better than everybody on the field. I want to be able to dog everybody out. People have been telling me for a long time I have a chance to not just be the best cornerback in St. Louis, but the best in the nation.
“Well, that’s why every day I’ve been going through the DB workouts and conditioning just to get ready for Notre Dame. Working, working, working just to be me, just to put out who I want to be.”
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