Notre Dame Enhancing Recruiting Process & Preparing for Changes to College Football
Notre Dame is a unique place and not for everyone as there is a strong balance of academics and athletics, which means the Fighting Irish program also has high expectations for its student-athletes.
Sure, the pool of prospects might be smaller for Notre Dame than say Alabama, but this staff isn’t using it as an excuse.
The close to the 2025 recruiting class wasn’t what Notre Dame wanted, but general manager Chad Bowden made a strong point on Wednesday after the Irish signed the No. 12 class per the 247 composite rankings.
“It's so funny in recruiting, everyone cares so much about what happens at the end, they forget about what we had before that,” stated Bowden. “We have an unbelievable class. I love this class. It's got incredible depth. It's solid at every position.
An example of Bowden’s point would be the Irish wrapped up elite athlete Dallas Golden in April. The four-star prospect held offers from most major programs and no one would have been surprised if Golden waited to the end of the cycle to commit or started to look around in the fall.
It’s what many prospects do. Yet, Golden didn’t. Will Black didn’t. JaDon Blair didn’t.
There were also some business decisions made in the final month of the recruiting cycle by Notre Dame’s staff as film was evaluated or the wheels got too hot for others. In fact, Notre Dame cut ties with linebacker Nathaniel Owusu-Boateng and Antwaun Parham while also parting ways with running backs Daniel Anderson and Justin Thurman.
“As you go down the stretch, I know everyone says you can be after certain people,” Bowden explained. “There are certain people that we pushed, some we didn't. When you recruit a kid for so long you figure out towards the end who's really worth it, who values this place and wants to be here, and those are the guys we push, and those are the guys that we got.”
Would it have been ideal for Notre Dame to close with receiver Derek Meadows and defensive tackle Jalen Wiggins in addition to landing linebacker Madden Faraimo? Absolutely. Yet, there is a tipping point in recruitment where practical business decisions have to be made and sometimes prospects just want to stay closer to what they know.
One piece to the recruiting puzzle Notre Dame has made clear is the fact they are more than willing to evolve and find outside the box ways to compete with the best in college football.
”Every year we look at enhancing what our recruiting process is,” said Bowden. “I think signing day changing, I think not going on the road in December, I think maybe some of the things that we did during the season is something that we can look at.
“There's so many different things that we're going to look at to enhance and we do that every single year with every cycle. We have an end-of-the-year meeting that I meet with Coach Freeman, go over what we feel like we've done well, where we missed. He obviously gives us his feedback and we get together and come up with the best plan for 2026.”
The most significant change Notre Dame and every other programs will need to evaluate is how they handled the final month leading up to the Early Signing Period. In previous years, the Early Signing Period had been the third week of December, which meant coaches could make final visits to prospects and get at least one more chance to make a lasting impression.
This year, the Early Signing Period started four days after the regular season and in some cases, programs were signing prospects while also preparing for a conference championship. Notre Dame made it a point to have its top targets and commits make a the trip for the Florida State, which was the last time the staff was able to check on most of its board.
Now, there is a huge positive in Bowden’s eyes as they can wrap up high school recruiting before the Transfer Portal opens next week.
”It gives you more time to just truly focus on what we were able to do in high school,” Bowden explained. “I think they're totally two separate periods. For us to be able to focus on just getting those guys signed before we moved on to the portal is great for us.”
The changes to college football aren’t slowing down as reduced rosters and more changes to NIL appear to be around corner. And Notre Dame will be ready for whatever the NCAA throws at them.
”I couldn't tell you what the next evolution is, but I know we're going to always be on top of it because college football changes every day,” said Bowden. “You never know what's going to go through, what's not going to go through with the NCAA and we just continue to push and try to develop and get better.
“The signing days change, a lot of dates have changed, contact days, when you go on the road. There's so much that has changed, but we always have a plan. We have multiple plans to make sure that we're on top of everything.”
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