Dad | Notre Dame Is "No-Brainer" For 2024 CB Commit Leonard Moore

When the Notre Dame offer came, Leonard Moore, knew that was the one.

“When he told me Notre Dame offered, I said, 'The recruiting is over. I mean it's a no-brainer,'” Mr. Moore, recalls.

But he wasn’t talking about his son’s recruitment.

He was referring to a conversation he had a year earlier with Glynn James, father of wide receiver Braylon James, who enrolled at Notre Dame in January.

Of course, when his son ended up in the same position, having received an offer from the Irish last month, the younger Moore’s recruiting process was essentially over too.

The 2024 Texas cornerback announced his commitment to Notre Dame on Saturday following a visit to South Bend last weekend.

“Glynn James had a great quote,” Mr. Moore says. “I called him up this Sunday and he said, 'Notre Dame ain't for everybody, but it's the best place for my son.'

“I say the same thing too. I'm big on kids having a great academic experience because you can do both.”

And he would know.

A professor for 25 years at LSU and Texas, Moore, has worked with several black student-athletes throughout his career.

“You can get an elite education and also play at a high level,” he says. “You can't do that in a lot of places in the country.

“There are very few and Notre Dame has the reputation for doing it the best.”

The younger Moore will certainly be prepared to excel on the field and in the classroom in college and is the type of student who likely could have picked his school even if he’d never stepped foot on a football field.

He takes his academics just as serious as football, basketball and track, excelling in each.

Round Rock High School typically practices in the morning. So, on gamedays the players have extra time to sleep in without needing to be at practice before school. Such was the case one Friday morning this past fall prior to Round Rock’s playoff game against perennial power Lake Travis.

“Leonard had to be at school at 9:15 that Friday, but I heard him get up at 7 in the morning,” his dad recalls. “He didn't have a test, but I go downstairs and this dude is just reviewing stuff for his Calculus class for an hour and a half.”

Despite the emphasis placed on academics in his home, Mr. Moore doesn’t take much credit for that.

“You can't raise that,” he says. “It's just in him.

“I think you can cultivate excellence, but I don't know if you can cultivate drive.”

One of the reasons his son wanted to get the process over so quickly was because it was beginning to interfere with his classes.

“He said, ‘I appreciate coaches coming to visit me, but they keep taking me out of class,’” Mr. Moore says. “When they started coming to watch him at basketball practice, that's when he was like, ‘It's getting a little bit much.’

“He just wants to be one of the guys.”

And now, Marcus Freeman, Mike Mickens and the entire Irish staff are fired up that he’ll be one of the guys at Notre Dame.