Welcome back to Irish Illustrated Insider, brought to you by Irish Illustrated.com with Tim

O'Malley. I'm Tim Priester. Pete Samson will join us in segment two for the recruiting

roundup. And Tim, we, I mean, some surprising news, news I think on Wednesday night. We kind of stumbled upon

you know, Will Fuller's announcement that he fully intends to come back next year for a senior year.

Great news for Notre Dame. And of course, earlier in the week, Nordy moved up to number four in the

college football playoff rankings. And obviously they're right in the thick of things here to land one of those four playoff spots. But let's start with Will Fuller, because that is the fresh news. And, you know, I find it interesting that some people in the business say, well, I think we were surprised at the timing of the announcement,

but not the fact that Will Fuller would say, you know what, I want to come back for my senior year.

I think you have to know the kid.

You have to know how humble and grounded he is.

And then we got a pretty good idea of how much the degree from Notre Dame meant to him because that was the first thing he stated last night.

And in the long history of not knowing who would stay or go, Fuller was a, had 50-50 list for me. I really had no idea. I didn't know. I didn't think, I was stunned. He said it, credit to you for asking the question, kind of point blank and reiterating it. I was stunned. He said it last night. I'm not stunned he's coming back. It's great news for Notre Dame's offense. He's coming back. It's like, we're all like, you want him to, okay, now you want him to reiterate it again. And then after I asked him twice, and he was asked a third time, and he clearly wanted to say that he was coming back for his senior year. And then, Mike Birch from Notre Dame, you know, after the interview goes to double

check. Is that exactly? Is that what you wanted to say? And Burch came back and confirmed it. So,

you know, look, I understand that he can change his mind. He's certainly entitled to change his mind.

And it's happened before. But the way it was delivered and then for Mike Birch to follow up and say, are you sure that's what you wanted to say, and for Fuller to reaffirm it? I think Notre Dame's in a pretty good spot here and can feel pretty confident that he'll, you will be back next year. Let's put it this way. If Will Fuller ends up going, it's probably because he scores another 14 touchdowns in the next five games, So Notre Dame wins the national title. And I think Notre Dame fans would wish him well, and he can get his degree a little later. So he'll be back, I think. Yeah, I mean, it's not like greatness is all of a sudden going to sneak up on him in the last couple games. He knows, and you can see, too, by the way, he carries himself into confidence and how comfortable he is within his

stardom now within a game, which we didn't see, you know, 10, 12 games ago. It's not like suddenly

he's going to wake up and say, hey, man, I'm really good. I should go to the NFL. He knows that,

but he wants to get his degree. And maybe he understands we didn't get this maybe for

down the road a little bit, but, you know, everybody says he's got to improve his degree. And maybe he understands we didn't get this maybe for down the road a little bit, but everybody says he's got to improve his hands. He's got to improve his hands. I'd be curious, I didn't follow up last time because there were so many people to talk to and so many things to do. But, you know, where he sees himself in terms of his hands and ability to catch a football consistently. Yeah, I think he can definitely improve coming back, too.

He's a dominant college football receiver.

There's no doubt about that.

It's just that he's slightly built.

He has smaller hands.

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