SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Thanks to the bit of barnstorming, Notre Dame football should pop up in various media outlets in Texas this week. Irish coaches will spread across the state on Friday to touch base with recruits and their coaches. Thirty high school juniors will attend the Irish-Washington State game in San Antonio on Saturday.
And if it's lucky, Notre Dame will land one or two. Maybe three. And they have to be OK with that, considering a certain football powerhouse sits just up the road in Austin.
"If I recruit Houston for us, and I'm going to Houston, this is my first time there," said Rob Ianello, Notre Dame's receivers coach and recruiting coordinator. "My only time there until I get there in December, potentially. The University of Texas has Houston divided in two. (A Texas coach) has probably been there three times, four times.
"They get to spend a lot more time in that area cultivating coaches, cultivating players, researching guys. That's a great advantage for them. Our advantage is, we're a national school and we can recruit some of the best players wherever they are. But we're not going to spend a week of time in December in Houston."
A theoretical byproduct of the off-site home game idea is generating recruiting interest in key areas, and as Ianello pointed out, no state produced more scholarship football players last year than Texas did.
But as Irish coach Charlie Weis duly pointed out, Texas coach Mack Brown's vaunted junior day each February tends to lock up some of the high-profile talent. And then there's competing with Texas A&M, Texas Tech, other Big 12 powers like Oklahoma and now even a Houston program on the rise.
That means Notre Dame's mission is a somewhat humble one this weekend: Make an impression on, ideally, a handful of players. The Irish have three starters from the state: guard Chris Stewart, defensive end Kapron Lewis-Moore and kicker Nick Tausch. That's plenty good for Ianello.
"(It's good) if we can sign one, two, maybe three guys a year out of the state of Texas," Ianello said. "We're trying not to be greedy. We're trying to go do some due diligence.
There are so many good football players in that state, and it's such a great state for football, just because they go to the University of Texas doesn't mean those 20-some guys exhausted the talent pool. We just have to get under some rocks and find some guys and win a few recruiting battles."
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