Notre Dame is Public enemy #1 in SC

Notre Dame has recently come under fire here in the Palmetto State for its recruiting tactics. For those of you that don't keep up with college football recruiting or log on to Tigernet, Notre Dame has gone after and recruited away South Carolina University's prized recruit, Gary Gray.

Gray is a 5 star Defensive Back out of Richland Northeast, Columbia SC. He is ranked #3 in the nation at his respective position. Up until about a week and half ago he was Gamecock devoted. Then enters in Weis and the Irish, poof, bye bye South Carolina, hello Notre Dame. Okay so Gray hasn't committed to ND yet but decommitting from SCU is just the same. He told Spurrier that he was reopening his recruiting and would make a decision in September as to where he will be going to school next year. SCU has been counting on Gray to help make this a top 25 class, one 5 star recruit usually brings such a ranking. Before his turnabout, he had been helping to recruit kids to the school so this decommittment might have some serious consequences to the recruiting class the coaching staff is putting together.

Now where ND comes into play here is that they may have used some very questionable recruiting tactics to get Gray away from SCU, at first you could dismiss this case because there was nothing previous to go on, well now there is. Enter Jamie Cumbie, a 4 star DE that signed with Clemson this past February out of Illinois.

Cumbie has now gone public with what he says were some very questionable recruiting tactics the Irish and Weis used to try and sway him away from Clemson last year. "I'm not going to lie," Cumbie said Tuesday. "The coaches at Notre Dame sent some bad letters ripping Clemson after I committed here." What happened to the days when college coaches recruited using their respective schools own merits? A school with the reputation that Notre Dame has should be ashamed to stoop to that level to get kids to go there. And it gets worse. Here's what he said about his recruiting trip to South Bend, Ind, "They had a piece of paper, and it broke down advantages and disadvantages. It said Notre Dame was televised every weekend, every Saturday. They said Clemson has a horrible education." You know I can maybe understand knocking a schools athletic program but why the need to try and do the same to its education? So not only does Weis use some very negative tactics but he's not very educated in the process. Clemson prides itself on his education, they are annually ranked by the US News for Americas best colleges and in 2001 was named the #1 public college of the year.

So I'm sure if Weis will trash Clemson to Cumbie you bet he did the same to Gray, I'm sure he used ND's football heritage to go against SCU's lack of football success which is well documented. I'm sure these aren't the only cases where ND has done some negative recruiting and I'm sure it won't be the last time either.

Story update 7/21/06

Jamie Cumbie has corrected the story that ran in Charleston's Post and Courier, thus I'm inclined to add it to this article, or not, but I should. Jamie says that Weis and company didn't really say that Clemson had a horrible education system, he just thought that was implied by the comparison. Here's the statement he gave about the situation and story:

"In an article in the Charleston Post (and) Courier earlier this week I was quoted as saying that Notre Dame recruiters had said Clemson's education was horrible. I did not characterize our conversations properly in that interview.

"No one from Notre Dame, either in writing or in general conversation, said Clemson had a horrible education. Notre Dame made a comparison in different areas between the two schools and the facts made Notre Dame look better. One of the areas was education. I am sure everyone makes comparisons during the recruiting process. It didn't bother me at all.

"No one from Notre Dame did anything wrong in their recruitment and I wish them the best this season."

Okay so maybe Charlie Weis and staff aren't the users of negative recruiting that we thought they were but they, thus they are no longer Public Enemy #1 here in the State of South Carolina, but they do remain the enemy in camp Gamecock for the Gary Gray fiasco.
Though Weis won't apologize for the Gray situation, he did take time to address what Cumbie had to say. "I find it quite amusing that a student-athlete already enrolled at another university has decided to be the team spokesman on Notre Dame recruiting practices," Weis said. "There is an obvious contradiction between how this was handled and what was stated. We do not use negative recruiting tactics."

Weis said all his coaching staff does is "represent what Notre Dame stands for."

"If supporting Notre Dame academics can be misconstrued as speaking down on another school's academics, call us guilty," he said.

We, along with Jamie, here at The Bradford Report no longer have an issue with ND and Weis and wish them both the best this season and into the future.

Go Tigers