Welcome to the January 12th edition of Irish Illustrated and Soutider.

I'm Tim O'Malley, joined by Drew Mentock of Irish Illustrated, along with some advanced information, courtesy Tom Loy and Eric Thomas, and that clandestine collection known as sources, Drew Mentock.

Well, Notre Dame football welcomed, I think, 25 freshmen on campus this weekend to the program.

Bar cry from the days of James Aldridge, George West, and Chris Stewart, who trailblaze this early enrollee.

But Drew, people don't want to hear about that because it was portal season, the most glorious time of the year on Notre Dame message boards for a select few.

And today's Notre Dame portal efforts have come to fruition for sign signes, and we do expect more. Why don't we start with your thoughts on the guy that we thought was in last week, Colorado cornerback, DJ McKinney, since you had that story. Yeah, as you mentioned, DJ, it kind of sounds like it was in the portal for a second, then it was rescinded, but we always

expected him still to end up with nerd aim.

He's a guy.

He's been a two-year starter at Colorado, started opposite.

Travis Funner last year, had a pretty good season last year.

Definitely stepped back this year once he kind of was expected to become the man, but he's a guy

with a lot of talent.

Before this season, people were thinking he could be a potential first or second round draft pick.

Things definitely didn't go that way this season.

His numbers dropped across the board, including I think your pro football focus has him as 20 missed tackles.

Regardless, it's an interesting tank because I think he, over the last two seasons,

has over 1,200 seasons playing outside a corner and less than 100 plane slot. And that's

obviously the position at need. So I'm kind of curious if that's a position where Coach

McCanns thinks he can get a lot out of him there, or if that gives him more fluidity with the two other outside corners or what the plan is there. But this is the guy with a lot of potential. I'm just curious how he fits in with Christian Gray and Leonard Moore. And we discussed that last week when we were trying to get the story up, and all of a sudden the story wasn't going to go up because he, you know, he wasn't 100% signed.

Jaden Sanders from Michigan, Drew, also signed with Notre Dame today.

Fresh from going to his sophomore season, also an outside corner.

I think spot on, though, I think Coach Mickens sees a potential nickel in here.

...