Notre Dame Blitzing The Country With Virtual Recruiting Initiative
During his April 29 press conference two days before the Blue-Gold Game, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly was asked what the month of May would look like for the Fighting Irish on the recruiting trail.
It would normally be a hectic month of travel for the Irish staff as they evaluate top prospects from across the country, but the NCAA’s dead period is still in effect until the end of May. The coaches aren’t allowed to hit the road, but they’re still dedicating the next couple of weeks to recruiting.
“We’re making our presence felt from our office,” Kelly said. “In [our] geographical recruiting areas, we’ll Zoom [high school] coaches and do some other things that will get the attention of those in the area that is in the framework of the NCAA rules. It’s important that we as a staff are felt in the month of May in our geographical recruiting areas — touching base with recruits, their coaches and counselors.”
One can reasonably assume that the attention grabber that Kelly spoke of was the billboards that appeared across the country on Wednesday, as seen in the tweet below from Jackie Hamilton, the mother of Irish safety Kyle Hamilton, who is featured on the digital display.
Notre Dame has billboards with various Irish players on them in strategically picked cities from across the country: Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jersey City/New York City, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Tampa Bay.
“We want to make it known that we recruit nationally,” Notre Dame defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator Mike Elston told BlueandGold.com on Wednesday. “With the help of Coach Kelly, we chose 13 major cities from across the country that we currently have players from and our guys who were just drafted to play in the NFL.
“Players and families in the area can see that Notre Dame has been there before — and why not your son? Why not you?”
Having the player’s name and picture on the billboard helps build their own personal brands, and also, the Irish staff felt that it was important to include their Twitter handle as well. The exact future of name, image and likeness in college athletics is unknown, but Notre Dame wants to do all it can to promote its student-athletes.
“It’s a really cool way to help our guys expand their platform and impressions,” Elston added. “Our players know that we support their endeavors once all of this passes. There’s a great energy and excitement to involve the current roster.”
The billboard initiative is only a part of what Kelly and the Irish staff have cooking on the recruiting front. Starting on Thursday, May 6, the Notre Dame coaches will be blitzing their recruiting areas by making phone calls to around 15-20 high school coaches per day through Friday, May 14.
During those seven business days, Notre Dame’s assistant coaches plan to contact more than 1,000 high school coaches. Notre Dame will be building relationships with new high schools, strengthening old relationships and diving deep with coaches of the Notre Dame’s top 2022 recruits.
“Our charge from Coach Kelly was that for this spring we’re going to get back into recruiting areas and build relationships with high school coaches,” Elston said. “We’re asking about the entire student athlete — academic progress, character, work ethic, leadership qualities. We want to figure out who they are holistically.”
During the past couple of cycles, Notre Dame has been geared more towards the assistant coaches recruiting their specific position, rather than them recruiting their area of expertise.
“It’s paid off because we’ve had really good classes, but at the end of the day, it’s all about building relationships in the recruiting process,” Elston explained. “Coach Kelly’s charge is to make sure we dig into an area, make phone calls and build those relationships.”
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