2023 TE Cooper Flanagan Enjoys "Awesome" Notre Dame Experience

Cooper Flanagan‍ was able to sum up his first visit to Notre Dame succinctly.

“Awesome,” the 2023 California tight end told Irish Sports Daily following his unofficial visit to South Bend on Saturday.

“First of all, the coaches, Coach (John) McNulty was great. The campus was amazing. It was beautiful. The stadium was breathtaking. I got to do a photo shoot, that was pretty cool. Watched some film. The whole school overall was amazing.”

The De La Salle High School standout enjoyed watching film with McNulty and seeing the similarities between how the Irish use their tight ends and what he does now.

“That was pretty cool,” Flanagan said. “They use a lot of 12 and 13 personnel. They obviously love using the tight end. We went over a lot of old tight ends who are now in the NFL, so that's super cool.

“They use 12 personnel kind of how De La Salle uses 12 personnel.”

McNulty did an impressive job of showing Flanagan and his mother, who joined him on the trip, around campus.

“He was great,” Flanagan said. “He was very patient and he did a great job taking us around. Overall, he very great.

“Touchdown Jesus was pretty cool. It's pretty breathtaking.”

The academic portion of the visit was also impactful.

“That's a big part too,” Flanagan said. “They were talking about how Notre Dame has clubs around the world, pretty much everywhere. If you graduate from Notre Dame, you're pretty much set for life after football because football is not going to last forever.”

Flanagan also made a stop at Michigan while in the Midwest, which he enjoyed, but he had to scratch a planned trip to Michigan State because of time. He’s planning unofficial visits to USC, UCLA and Washington when he gets back to the West Coast.

His offer sheet currently includes schools like Michigan, Michigan State, Washington, Cal, Colorado and Tennessee.

Flanagan and McNulty will “definitely” be in touch moving forward and an offer from the Irish would be a major one for him.

“It's always been a dream and I think it'd be a good fit, for me at least, but we'll see.”