Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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www.BLUEANDGOLD.com AUGUST 2020 19 Phase II of Notre Dame's summer plan. Mandatory workouts began, with players allowed to work out in groups of no more than 50. Coaches could require up to eight hours per week of weight training, condition- ing and film review, with film taking up no more than two hours. • July 24: The NCAA's six-week plan started here, with two weeks of walk-throughs with a football permitted. This is Phase III in Notre Dame's plan and will be used for "install" of the playbook that would have ordinarily taken place in spring practice. The NCAA allows up to 20 hours per week in this stage, the typi- cal in-season number. Eight hours can be used on strength and condi- tioning, six on walk-throughs and six on meetings. • Aug. 7: Training camp practices are allowed to begin. This fits the normal timeline of 29 days before the season opener, with 25 practices allowed, and is Notre Dame's Phase IV. There are two differences, though, from a normal training camp year. The Irish will not start camp at Cul- ver Academy, and they will not have uncapped time for a majority of it before classes start. In typical years, the NCAA puts no weekly hour limit on training camp before the fall semester. But with classes starting two weeks ear- lier than normal, the 20-hour rule during the semester is bumped up with them. • Aug. 10: Fall classes start for the entire student body. Players will move into dorms or off-campus housing. All Notre Dame students were sent a COVID-19 self-test kit and will not be allowed on campus until they test negative. • Sept. 5 (or 6): Notre Dame is scheduled to play at Navy in its season opener. The exact date has not been set, and the game is in flux with an on-time start still in question. Navy's conference, the American, has not yet announced any plans to change or shorten its schedule. The NCAA released in-season guidelines that recommend players be tested within 72 hours of games and participate in daily self-health checks. According to a Sports Illus- trated report, the Power Five is re- quiring tests within 72 hours and any player who tests positive must miss at least 10 days of practice or competition. Anyone found to have been in "high-risk" contact with a person who tested positive must miss 14 days. High risk is defined as being within six feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes when at least one person is not wearing a mask. Testing for coaches is not man- dated, but the Power Five's guide- lines require coaches or staff mem- bers on the sideline to wear a mask if they are not tested in the same man- ner as players. Referees will be tested once per week as well. The AAC, considered the top Group of Five conference, is also re- quiring players to be tested within 72 hours of a game. The NCAA's guidelines encourage practices to occur outside as often as possible and to wear masks during them. They also suggest training in "functional units" made up of five or 10 people who work out together for the entire season. Those play- ers would only be considered "high risk" to each other instead of an en- tire team. In 11-on-11 football prac- tices, though, that becomes harder to enforce. According to the guidelines, games or a season could be suspended if schools cannot isolate players or staff members, cannot test weekly, campuses and their greater commu- nities are deemed unsafe by health officials, schools cannot contact trace and/or health officials are concerned about burdening the local healthcare system. ✦ Virtual Recruiting May Be Here For A While Virtual campus visits, once viewed as a temporary fad, are here to stay for a while. They may be the only shot a 2021 football recruit gets to "see" campus before December's National Signing Day arrives. At least, that's how Brian Kelly views it. The NCAA dead period runs through Aug. 31, and the ump- teenth extension of it feels inevitable. But it could expire as scheduled, or expire in October, and Kelly won't think much of it. "We're operating as if you will not visit this campus this recruiting season, and we have to take our campus to you," Kelly said in a June Zoom call with reporters. He's assuming the worst case with the dead period. But he's also thinking in terms of safety. Notre Dame Stadium won't be anywhere near full capacity this season. If it has fans, it may be limited to students, faculty and player families. Season ticket holders are no sure thing. The school has already announced it will not be selling single-game tickets through its usual lottery system. Those decisions indicate it isn't safe to have people from all stretches of the country filling up campus for a weekend, even in a smaller quantity. Recruits and their families fit into that category, in Kelly's view. "We need to think that with all the precautions that are being taken relative to your own campus, relative to testing, how is that you can fly in somebody, a family that hasn't been tested, put them up on your campus in your hotel and let them walk around campus freely?" Kelly asked. "That's going to be hard to navigate through this in the fall. There's still work to be done. "I don't think it's going to happen quickly. If it does happen, we'll be excited about it. But we'll be very cautious and we'll have to ask a lot of questions." The NCAA first instituted the dead period March 13. It prohibits coaches from hosting on-campus visits and going off campus to meet players at their schools or homes. Every program has been affected, and no 2021 recruit has taken an official visit to a school. The common trend now has been to take commitments from players who have not stepped foot on campus or only visited by themselves without meeting the coaches. Notre Dame has done so four times. Those four will probably not be the last, though the Irish are pursuing some longtime targets who visited campus before the dead period, notably Clarkston (Mich.) offensive lineman Rocco Spin- dler. Notre Dame's national recruiting philosophy has added another layer that some other teams don't have to face. Its 12 commitments are from 11 different states and their hometowns stretch from Cali- fornia to Rhode Island. It's less likely a recruit Notre Dame offered during the dead period has been on campus for a game or an unofficial visit pre-offer, because they have continued to offer nationally since the pandemic started. Florida, for instance, has 12 of its 21 commitments from in-state players and another four from Geor- gia. The Gators have received eight pledges since the dead period, six of which are from Florida. USC has landed 14 players since the pandemic, and nine of them are from California or Las Vegas. Players are more frequently choosing local schools with which they have the most familiarity. "We're grinding through recruiting like everybody else," Kelly said. "Everybody loses something. We certainly lose something by not being able to get you out of your state and bring you up to Notre Dame, there's no doubt about it. "But everybody is dealing with the same situation. We're going to keep being who we are, we're going to keep working hard and at the end of the day we're going to be fine." — Patrick Engel