SOUTH BEND - Tom Lemming can usually tell you who the No. 37 college football prospect in the state of Montana is without having to buy time with a single “um” or “well.”
Or what Louisiana Tech’s biggest recruiting mistake of the past 10 years happened to be. Or the next big flop in the recruiting class of 2010, the next best thing, the sleeper, the character-flawed phenom, the mirage.
And then there’s Notre Dame first-year head football coach Brian Kelly.
Lemming hesitated, then buckled.
“I think he’s a mystery, and he’s going to remain a mystery until next February,” said Lemming, a recruiting analyst for CBS College Sports Network. “And so is this recruiting class.
“By next February, we’ll see if some of these lesser-known recruits develop as well as they did under Kelly at Cincinnati. And in next year’s recruiting class, we’ll be able to see if he has the aggressiveness, the personality, the connections and the relentlessness that you need to be at one of the Super 16 schools. We’ll also see if his assistant coaches have those qualities, because they need it as much as he does.”
As far as this class? Depending on who the Irish can pull in on National Signing Day, Wednesday, ND will fall anywhere from 16th to 25th in Lemming’s national team rankings - still ahead of the No. 30 rating Lemming attached to Charlie Weis’ first class (2005) the last time a recruiting cycle fell during a coaching transition at ND.
Rivals.com was more forgiving, listing the 21-man Irish class at No. 14 on the eve of signing day.
The Irish fan base, at least the message-board-savvy vocal minority, has reacted with a toxic mix of confusion, skepticism and outrage.
And yet, if the Rivals ranking holds, ND will have finished ahead of the likes of Michigan (20), Miami (21), Ohio State (22), Nebraska (31), Pitt (33), Iowa (38), Wisconsin (70) - to name a few - and BCS-busters TCU (39) and Boise State (81).
“It’s going to be very interesting to see how Brian Kelly and the recruiting classes that he brings in hold up to the fan base’s scrutiny,” ESPN recruiting analyst Tom Luginbill said, “because in the places he’s been prior to Notre Dame, you could lure this kid in as a verbal commitment and it may not make any waves.
“But if you lure a kid into Notre Dame and he’s not perceived by the public as a quote-unquote ‘good or great player,’ then that’s something you’re constantly going to have to deal with as the head coach at Notre Dame.
“The good news, in my opinion? Brian Kelly doesn’t care. Brian Kelly is going to bring in who he thinks is the right fit for him. And so far to this point, we can say what we want, but everything he’s touched has turned to gold.”
Recruiting analyst Allen Wallace, for one, sees the gold - or at least the potential for gold - in the way Kelly went about salvaging this class, which did had four defections: Defensive end/outside linebacker Chris Martin to Cal, outside linebacker Blake Lueders to Stanford, cornerback Toney Hurd Jr. to Texas A&M and running back Giovanni Bernard to North Carolina.
“I’m not sure some of the other high-profile schools with coaches changes - USC, Tennessee, Texas Tech - are really doing better since the change,” said Wallace, publisher of SuperPrep and national recruiting editor for Scout.com. “Tennessee has added players, but they’re not adding highly-recruited players. Texas Tech is the same situation.
“And USC, while they have these all-world skill talents like Kyle Prater and Robert Woods in the class, where are all the offensive linemen and linebackers? This may be a very unbalanced class. There’s a lot of players considering them still out there, but certainly the jury’s out.”
Wallace likes the fact that Kelly grabbed some of the recruiting momentum from ND’s 2008 Hawaii Bowl appearance and Weis’ plucking of Hawaii products Manti Te’o and Roby Toma last cycle and built on it. Two of ND’s late additions could be Hawaii players defensive end Kona Schwenke and strong safety Jeremy Ioane.
“I also like that he didn’t just leave scholarships for the next year and not use them,” Wallace said. “If you find someone you think can help your team, then you should use them. If you save them, there’s no guarantee you’re going to get the guy the next year you saved that scholarship for.”
Kelly’s trump card is player development. In an admittedly limited sampling, three Weis recruits played in this year’s Senior Bowl, an NFL Draft showcase disguised as a college all-star game.
They were offensive tackle Sam Young, a former five-star recruit, who was pursued by every major school; Eric Olsen, a four-star recruit who also had offers from the likes of Boston College, Miami, North Carolina, Maryland, Syracuse and Virginia; and safety Kyle McCarthy - sometimes portrayed as a step above Rudy.
But McCarthy was a three-star prospect coming out of high school, who received offers from Kent State, Navy and Toledo, but also Arizona and Ohio State.
That’s way more interest than any of the three Kelly protégés attracted who played in the Senior Bowl.
Two-star wide receiver Mardy Gilyard’s only big-time offer came from Cincinnati. Two-star Central Michigan QB Dan LeFevour, who Kelly recruited, was a Chicago-area kid whose best offers were Ball State, Eastern Illinois, Eastern Michigan and Central. Cincinnati QB Tony Pike, who Kelly inherited, received no stars coming out of high school and had to pay his own way to UC at first before convincing the coaches he was worth spending a scholarship on.
Lemming said the ultimate formula for Kelly would be a blend of diamonds in the rough and elite prospects.
“That’s what Lou Holtz did,” he said. “(All-American) Chris Zorich was not a national recruit. He was a player Holtz developed. So was Frank Stams and Stan Smagala and Michael Stonebreaker. He mixed those guys with five-star guys like Ricky Watters and Jerome Bettis, Todd Lyght and Bryant Young.
“You can look at Kelly’s practice of moving guys around to other positions and feel very good about that. Lou Holtz did that very well. And no one did that better than Ara (Parseghian). What Kelly has that Charlie (Weis) didn’t was the ability to develop players.
“Charlie did develop quarterbacks, wide receivers and tight ends. But when you talk about offensive linemen, running backs and defensive players, he fell short. You can say maybe the players were overrated, but everyone in the country wanted most of their running backs. You can’t have that many busts. It’s player development. But Kelly also has to be able to get the elite players and develop them too.”
Lemming said teams like TCU, Boise and Cincinnati can have great seasons without four- and five-star players, because their schedules allow them to.
“Yes, they beat BCS competition sometimes, but they don’t do it every week,” he said. “You plop Boise into the Southeastern Conference, and they’ll lose six games a year.
“I think Brian Kelly knows he’s in a different world now. There’s so much more bad-mouthing from other schools, so much more time spent in recruiting, so much more poaching. When you’re Notre Dame, people are going to take shots at you.
“The flip side is the name gets you in every door. But what you have to realize once you’re in the door, it’s a war. If Kelly and his nine assistants didn’t know before, they know it now. Time will tell if they’re ready for the fight.”
