Brian, let's talk about recruiting up next during the Irish Breakdown podcast,

Bright to buy our friends over at Fanduel.

And obviously, Notre Dame has been red hot on the recruiting trail over the last couple of seasons.

They have the number one ranked recruiting class in the country in 2026, according to On 3.

And they're off to one heck of a start in the 2027 class.

I think I read like 24, four, seven sports,

I think has them like third on three, has them like seventh or something. They just signed

a big commitment from Jackson Vaughn yesterday, big time defensive end who reclassified from

28 to 27 out of New Jersey. And so what we wanted to do is kind of broaden the scope a little

bit and talk about why Notre Dame is recruiting so well. And, you know, there's obvious factors in here that we're going to dive into. We're going to talk about the Marcus Freeman effect. But, you know, it's one thing for us to sit here and talk about, dude, this team is red hot. Man, Marcus Freeman and Mike Martin and Carter Almond and that whole staff, they're absolutely cooking right now.

But we wanted to take some time and talk about the why behind it.

Yeah, I think the reason why I thought this conversation was interesting because I think that

Notre Dame fans recognize that recruiting is better.

And I think they recognize some of the reasons why Notre Dame is recruiting

better. But I think the reality is that the level of success is due to a really a lot of different

things coming together at the same time. And if they're not all present, it's going to slowly kind of

knock them down from where they are. Where if one of these things is missing, maybe instead of having the number two class, I have a number four class. If two or three of those things are missing, maybe they fall to six or seven. If three or four of those things are missing, maybe they fall to 10 or 11 and that kind of thing. And they all go together. And I thought it'd be very interesting for us to really discuss why.

Because when you look at the way that Notre Dame is recruiting, I mean, this is like, this is taking like the best classes from Charlie Weiss, putting him into one.

And Notre Dame is doing that annually now, meaning like you take like the 07 and 08 offensive classes and then mix them with like

the 09 defensive class. It had in Manti and you know some guys like that and maybe the 08

class is close to that. But like they had, you know, came up short here, there. You just haven't

seen this kind of recruiting for a long, long time.

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