Taking stock at ND in latest transfer trends and where they might be headed
The angst toward that end of the 16-day spring transfer portal window was as palpable as it was prevalent among the Notre Dame football fan base.
And it wasn’t as much about the logistics of replacing four prominent defecting members of Notre Dame’s 2021 class, all departing within a seven-day span, as it was about what it meant to college football as a whole, moving forward.
Not that finding replacement parts for quarterback Tyler Buchner, running back Logan Diggs, wide receiver/cornerback Lorenzo Styles and linebacker Prince Kollie is irrelevant.
But the prospect of a lopsided playing field in future years when it comes to roster churn and roster management, extrapolated in part from their departures, is more daunting. Because it screams out the question of whether Notre Dame actually has a place in the new college football world order.
Just as unregulated NIL (name, image, likeness) asks the same with similar decibel levels.
“I think so,” Rivals national director of recruiting Adam Gorney said on the Inside ND Sports Podcast when asked specifically about Notre Dame’s self-imposed shallow replacement pool when it come to replenishing talent through the transfer portal, consisting largely of grad transfers, and undergrads no further into their college careers than freshman year.
“But it also means high school recruiting and evaluation is so much more important and valuable.”
In other words, the margin of error just shrank a little more on that front, which at least plays into second-year head coach Marcus Freeman’s wheelhouse and supports his decision to hire Benton Butler recently as ND’s assistant athletic director for player personnel to oversee it all.
With Notre Dame currently at 82 scholarships, the Irish could add three more from the portal in the next month to the record five scholarship transfers and two key walk-on portal additions accrued during the December/January portal window.
In fact, converted Rhode Island safety Antonio Carter II was expected to arrive Wednesday for an official visit that will linger until Friday before former Irish coach Brian Kelly and LSU get to make their pitch in Baton Rouge, La., later that day.
As far as the roster subtractions, from the start of the 2022 season, 12 Irish scholarship players entered the transfer portal. Two others are no longer on the team, but did not enter the portal officially – cornerback Philip Riley and kicker Josh Bryan.
There were four players lost to medical hardships/retirements — safety Justin Walters, QB Ron Powlus III, linebacker Will Schweitzer and recently added transfer wide receiver Kaleb Smith.
If that sounds like an unusually high rate of attrition beyond expiring eligibility, keep in mind of the 205 players signed from the beginning of the Brian Kelly Era (2010) through 2018, a class in which the recruits have either completed their eligibility or will do so this coming season, 76 of them transferred (37%).
That number of transfers grows to 103, signed by Kelly or Freeman out of high school, when you include players in subsequent classes. Running back Diggs, still perusing his options, became No. 103 on April 27, three days before the spring deadline.
The most staggering numbers, though, come from what happened after those players left Notre Dame.
Ninety-one of them had reached NFL Draft eligibility as of last month’s draft in Kansas City, Mo., though not all 91 have tested the draft waters yet.
Still, of those 91, signed across 11 recruiting cycles, two reached the NFL via the draft.
Two.
They were Aaron Lynch in the fifth round in 2014 by the San Francisco 49ers and Eddie Vanderdoes in the third round in 2017 by the Oakland Raiders.
In the 11 cycles before that (1999-2009) only three NFL Draft picks emerged from the transfers from those recruiting classes as well — wide receiver Shaq Evans (UCLA) from the 2009 class going in the fourth round of the 2014 draft to the New York Jets, tight end Greg Olsen (Miami) in the first round in 2007 by the Chicago Bears and Jamaar Taylor (Texas A&M) in the sixth round in 2004 by the New York Giants.
None of those four were around to see their sophomore season in South Bend. In fact, Taylor and Lynch were the only two who lasted long enough at Notre Dame to attend their first class.
With defecting ND quarterbacks and the NFL dream, the historical numbers are skewed even further against it.
Zak Kustok became the first QB of 33 to sign with Notre Dame out of high school in the post-Lou Holtz Era, in 1997. Of the 29 that followed not currently on the Irish roster (Steve Angeli, Kenny Minchey) or who recently medically retired (Ron Powlus III), all but six either changed positions, transferred or both.
Two-sport player Evan Sharpley is one of those six. The others were Brady Quinn, Jimmy Clausen ,Tommy Rees, DeShone Kizer and Ian Book.
Of the 13 who transferred and have no remaining college eligibility, not a single one played a down of NFL football as a quarterback. Of those who stayed and remained a QB, only Rees wasn’t drafted to play professional sports. Sharpley was drafted by the Seattle Mariners to play baseball. The other four were drafted by NFL teams ranging from round 1 to round 4.
Of the eight who changed positions and exhausted their eligibility, Arnaz Battle, Carlyle Holiday and Abram Elam played in the NFL. Elam, an undrafted free agent, was one who changed positions AND transferred as he was expelled from Notre Dame.
What the historical numbers don’t provide is where all of this is headed with the relatively new NCAA transfer policy of allowing immediate first-time transfers, barely two years old now. Of the six ND QBs who didn’t transfer or switch positions, all of them played when sitting out a year was part of the price of transferring.
Quinn, on this week’s Inside ND Sports podcast, admitted he thought seriously about leaving ND in the interim between coach Tyrone Willingham’s firing and Charlie Weis replacing him in December of 2004.
“Should I look to go somewhere else? Should I look to transfer?,” he said of the thoughts he entertained at the time. “I always came back to the foundation of why I went to Notre Dame — that was for the degree. That was for the spiritual calling that I felt going there in the first place that was separate from football.”
Sharpley, this week in a phone interview, admitted he came very close to leaving as well, in September of 2007 after QB Demetrius Jones quit after his first and only start and freshman Clausen was named to replace him. And if the current transfer rules were in place, Sharpley very likely would have either then or at another point in his career.
“At the very least, I would have been much more curious,” he said. “With the old rules in place, that Notre Dame degree was massive on my end. That was probably the deciding factor for me on not transferring.
“Baseball played a role too, which I know is unique. But at that point in my career, I knew the chances of having a shot at the NFL were probably pretty small. I would have had to go somewhere and really balled out. Staying ended up being a good decision.
“I kind of use the example. I haven’t had to use my résumé to get a job since I’ve left. So, the doors that Notre Dame opened ended up being a calculated and smart move, I believe, on my end. The thing is I don’t think that the degree itself has gone down — the value of it — but I don’t think players care as much now.
“It’s not that Notre Dame is recruiting a different type of player. Granted, I’m 15 years removed now, and I think it matters, but the feeling I get is I don’t think it matters as much.”
There’s some anecdotal evidence to support that.
The largest class of transfers so far is the 2018 group with 15, but 11 of them left with their Notre Dame degree in hand. And that’s largely been the trend in other Kelly Era classes. But the 2021 class has had 11 defections so far — including Buchner, Styles, Diggs and Kollie — and none of them are grad transfers.
Will the 2021 class prove to be an outlier?
Admittedly, on a national scale there was skepticism about how well those classes would eventually hold together. That was a class where evaluations by coaches and recruiting services were limited by the COVID-19 pandemic.
What’s more, recruits couldn’t visit campuses and coaches couldn’t sit in prospects’ living rooms and meet their families. It was courtship by Zoom.
Several states postponed their high school football seasons to spring or canceled them all together, taking away another evaluative check and balance.
Former Irish safety Khari Gee had never even been to South Bend before moving into his dorm as a freshman in June of 2021. To seal his Notre Dame offer, cornerback Chance Tucker had to send video clips of himself flipping his hips, moving laterally and maneuvering around various cones. After reviewing Tucker's tape, Notre Dame offered him a scholarship on June 2, 2020.
A record eight signees of the 27 players in the class were poached from other schools’ recruiting classes. As they conclude their sophomore years academically, only one of those eight remains destined to be at ND this summer and beyond — running back Audric Estimé, who was originally committed to Michigan State.
“I hope there’s a self-correction in all this transferring in the future, but I don’t know,” Sharpley said. “I don’t have a lot of faith or trust in the NCAA, to be quite honest. I could see them overcorrecting and going back to the dark ages, where you’re not allowed to do much of anything. It's really interesting. COVID, obviously, played a role in how rosters look with the transfer portal.
“I think there needs to be some checks and balances. I don’t know if I’m the guy to put my name on what those are going to be, but I would say it’s probably here to stay. I hope they’re able to make some tweaks that will be able to benefit all, both the schools and the players.”
Gorney believes future classes will be watching this one closely to gauge the percentage of success stories versus cautionary tales.
“I can tell you for sure that NFL teams are looking at this and saying, ‘Wait a minute. If you’re not starting from day 1, you’re in the portal the next day and what does that mean for you?’ I think that’s going to be an issue with this as well.
“Even in life, moving somewhere doesn’t mean you’re still not going to have problems. So, you’re still going to have issues wherever you transfer. There may be other players better than you or a coach that you don’t like, and so just leaving for a new fresh start wasn’t always the answer.”
Meanwhile, Quinn was one of 400 former players back on campus for Notre Dame’s second-annual Legacy Weekend, which included the Blue-Gold Game on April 22, but so much more leading up to it.
Currently, Quinn is the father of four, an analyst for Fox and CBS Sports, chairman of the 3rd & Goal Foundation for veterans and the face of Notre Dame’s FUND Foundation for student-athletes.
In the later stages of the Kelly Era, in which the longtime Irish coach reinvented himself then coaxed Irish teams to the playoff twice (2018 and 2020), Quinn was convinced the Irish were on a trajectory that would eventually give them a chance to play for a national title.
He still is.
With the portal challenges.
With the NIL layover on top of all that.
With Freeman now in his second year as a head coach.
“I think the reality is you’ll see most coaches look to build through high school recruiting and then supplement through the transfer porta,” Quinn said, “as opposed to there being these big, wide swings, unless you’re talking about first-year head coaches. …
“[With NIL] the University of Notre Dame is as good a place as anyone. I can promise you that with the work that we’ve already done [with the FUND collective], not just with the football team, but with men’s and women’s basketball and other sports, we would like to think we have a very unique approach.
“There’s a buzz [on campus]. I feel like there’s a foundation that’s been set and still building, but it’s definitely getting to the point where I think it’s got that unique feel that makes it truly Notre Dame. It’s different from everywhere else in the country.”
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