My main class is the undergraduate capstone course that all business seniors have to take. I teach 50% of those capstone classes so I see a ton of students per year for years!! I have had starters among other athletes in football, baseball, volleyball, soccer, most of the men's golf team, the current US Women's Amateur champ, equestrian team, but have never had a basketball player. We think Bruce hides them in the b-ball facility. Clemson (where I taught) for 5 years was very similar.
on the ag judging teams? Like livestock judging? I was on Purdue's dairy judging team and missed more classes than the football players. I was off campus a lot during the fall semesters. l
about academics ahead of time, some find it still
over and above what they thought.
probably as much as NIL. I just think with the money available to college athletes right now, there is less importance being placed on the academic side and the degree. Players and families are seeing paydays now and chasing immediate payoff which I think is fools gold. This is the same as it has always been in some ways. The elite players are going to get big NIL deals and future benefits in professional basketball. I don't think NIL changes things in that perspective in terms of the challenge for ND to get elite players. We have always had that challenge and I don't think it is any different today.
My concern with the current environment is the next level players - the guys in the #50-#150 ranking. These guys have needed to hone their game and still likely wouldn't strike it big financially playing professional ball and were somewhat dependent on getting a degree. But they could still play and play well. They also valued what ND would offer and knew that it would be a process with benefits that might be 10-20 years down the road. Now, those benefits can happen almost immediately. Kids in the #50-150 range could cash in on maybe $50K+ plus year. For many of them, that is lucrative and they are not going to be as excited on the academic side in my opinion. To me, that is ND's challenge. If I'm a 18-20 year old kid and I can make somewhere in the $50K range, do I really want to bust my ass academically knowing I can keep making cash. It's a very shortsighted view but in the current world of immediate gratification, ND isn't going to win that game I don't think.
I just don’t think that the trend holds.
We’re already seeing donors losing their appetite for trying to buy championships. Mainly because it doesn’t work.
I also think that these kids are smart enough to eventually understand that 150-200k in NIL money in college won’t take them that far in the real world without a degree and an alumni network working for them. There have been a couple of players already who’ve been talking to kids about ignoring the NIL genie and instead focusing on programs that can either get them to the pros with a good shot of sticking or programs that can them up for when the ball stops bouncing. In 5-6 years, everyone is going to see that NIL only really works for the best of the best and everyone else had better have a longer term vision or they’ll be doing factory work or coaching youth basketball for a pittance compared to what they could be making with a solid degree.
Yes, there will always be those kids who don’t give a damn and chase whatever money they can get when they can get it. But from what I’ve seen and read, I think that number will remain low and probably won’t be the kinds of kids that Notre Dame appealed to in the first place.
A couple of things to keep in mind here.
The first is that quite a few of these top athletes are also good students. If we’re talking strictly about basketball, than your top 10-20 recruits are already probably off the board because they’re either going to go an alternate route or they plan on being on and done, which means academics don’t matter because they can skate by for a year doing nothing. Add to that the fact that once you get past the sure fire NBA guys, more and more of these kids want to know that there’s something after college because they’ve seen what happens to guys who don’t prepare. They want a solid backup plan because they don’t necessarily have the same built in support system that their more well off classmates will have. There’s no VP job waiting for them when they graduate.
The second is that nobody seriously looks at Notre Dame without coaches telling them up front that not going to class is an option at Notre Dame the way that it is at schools like Alabama, LSU, or Ohio State. These kids know from their freshman or sophomore years of high school that they’ll need the grades to attend Notre Dame.
Coach Shrews will get the kinds of kids he needs. I’m confident of that. He’s ridiculously well regarded within the NBA, and you can bet your bottom dollar that kids know that and know that he can get them there as effectively as Kentucky or UConn and they’ll have the Notre Dame Family behind them when they graduate. That’s no small thing with todays recruits.
Notre Dame has always been, and will always be, “not for everyone”. But i personally believe that the number of kids that it’s for has never been higher. And there’ll be more and more of those kids as the NFL and NBA continue to squeeze the “middle class” of players out of the game. Killing your body for 50k in the UFL or playing in the G League is going to look less and less appealing as time goes on.
IMO, nothing we're seeing with departures is that different vs what's happening everywehre. But ND's academic requirements make backfilling via the portal much tougher than it would be at other schools. So overall I think it's a net disadvantage for ND.
But it seems appropriate for this thread.
Notre Dame invited media to see the newly opened practice facility almost five years ago. I recorded Mike Brey's stand-up interview in the lobby with the gaggle of local media people. The entire interview is a good example of why it was fun to cover Brey and the program.
The link below will start the recording at the discussion of transfers. Much has changed since then, but in some ways not much has changed at all in terms of players' mindsets. Note how Brey discusses the players knowing that they are signing up for the academic challenge as well as the basketball challenge.
I don't doubt that Micah Shrewsberry makes a similar pitch. The academic rigor is part of the package, and it isn't for everyone. Nevertheless, it should not be a surprise to anyone who is at Notre Dame. In that respect, I don't know that academics makes the program more susceptible to transfers.
pride of being ND is that we are different from everyone else and the academics are big component. That being said in an environment where transfers are at will I think anytime a player who improves their game and their "stock" they are a target. If they dont love the academics or maybe it is more difficut than they anticipated, I can see if being a factor.
The other factor is these are 18-22 year old kids. They make mistakes or sometines what they want in life changes. College athletes have long been one of the few categories of kids who could not freely change their mind. To put into context ND has a 97% retention rate after freshman year which is outstanding but that still means there are 60-70 kids who dont come back for sophomore year so it should not be surprising to see players with more opportunities to move do so.
“If they don't love the academics or maybe it is more difficult than they anticipated, I can see it being a factor.”
Again I ask, would LaPhonso Ellis, Jerian Grant, or Kyle McAllarney have remained at ND if the current rules/environment were in place when they encountered adversity, whether academic or otherwise? What about Laimbeer or Monty Williams. I’m not so sure.
...that the current environment is the same (or maybe even more lenient) than it was when they were at ND.
would not have gotten paid to transfer when they were suspended. Now, they could have played immediately and most certainly would have received some lucrative offers to transfer. They both faced barriers to transferring then that they would not face today, and the incentives/enticements to transferring today are far greater.
and basketball. I think most of NDNation would agree with the proposition that college is not for everyone so I dont think we should be surprised when it turns out college is not for some athletes and they only come because it is what they need to do.
...because every FB player knows he's going to have to spend at least three years in college due to the NFL's CBA, so they're going to have to have their academic house in order at least a little bit.
Hoops players can go right to the NBA after a semester.
...the hoops season spans over both semesters (starts towards the end of the first, finishes towards the middle of the 2nd)? It seems to me like football players can take a little more rigorous classes during the spring. While there are practices and the spring game, I imagine the coaches are preaching to their players that if they need to take care of something academic, that comes first. Basketball players don't have that advantage because of how the season spans across both semesters.
to wreak havoc with the players’ academic lives. Plus, the fatigue of being on the road on a Monday night, for example, and then trudging to class on Tuesday morning is not enviable.
But the other part is players at schools that don't really care aren't going to be expected to contribute academically after their first semester grades come in, provided they plan on entering the draft.