What is the plan for Notre Dame hoops and hockey? How realistic is the ACC output? Irish mailbag

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Notre Dame’s spring training ends with the Blue-Gold Game on April 25. Marcus Freeman should take his fifth — and perhaps most talented — team back to spring training around Saint Patrick’s Day, a month early. And with more than a third of the roster new, let alone three new assistant coaches, Freeman will face sky-high expectations as he reorganizes the program.

Of course you have questions about that, although this week’s Notre Dame mailbag is more big picture (What’s with the ACC? Are the Irish leaving non-football sports behind?) than the smaller stuff (What does the quarterback spot look like behind C.J. Carr?).

Let’s get started. Before you know it, spring training will be here.

Note: Submitted questions have been edited for clarity and length.

Have we made a Faustian bargain with the success of football? For the first twenty years of this century, football was on the fringes of consistent national relevance. But men’s and women’s basketball, plus hockey, were at an all-time high. Now women’s hoops are in a funk, men’s basketball is largely unacceptable and hockey is best left unmentioned. What are Notre Dame’s (and Pete Bevacqua’s) ambitions in those sports? Where is NIL outside of football? What are Pat Garrity’s roster building strategies in basketball? –Dennis C.

This is a great question. Because you’re right, the state of both basketball programs and hockey is dire. There’s a good chance the men’s team won’t make the ACC tournament. The women’s program could miss the NCAA tournament despite having a national player of the year candidate in Hannah Hidalgo. Somehow, hockey is 1-15 in the Big Ten under first-year head coach Brock Sheahan.

Consider a decade in which men’s basketball contended with the Elite 8 and an ACC Tournament title, the women’s team made four national title games in a five-year span (not including winning it all in 2018), and hockey made the NCAA Tournament six times in a seven-year span (2013-19).

Has the college sports landscape changed? Evidently. But going from Muffet McGraw, Jeff Jackson and Mike Brey to Micah Shrewsberry, Niele Ivey and Sheahan is a huge shift. Going from Hall of Fame level coaching (literally with McGraw) to two first-time head coaches and a third coach who had two seasons of major college experience was always going to be a step back. Your question is whether Notre Dame will commit the resources to restart those engines. I don’t know the answer to that. I’m not sure Bevacqua knows the answer to that.

Is investing in signing a five-star men’s basketball player or retaining an All-American in women’s basketball money well spent? And does it even matter if you surround those players with mid-level talent? Looking at both basketball programs, it feels like Notre Dame built two programs with half measures, while funding the football program like a team expected to win a national title (rather than just hoping to compete for it).

Notre Dame doesn’t pretend to compete for the men’s basketball national championship, but it is making one NCAA Tournament appearance in nine years with no end in sight under Shrewsberry. Notre Dame expects to be in the women’s basketball championship game, but Ivey has yet to get the Irish past the Sweet 16, even though she has made it that far in the last four seasons. It’s harder to make sense of hockey, but last place in the Big Ten fails. None of this should be good enough for Bevacqua. We’ll find out in a month whether he (and Hoops general manager Pat Garrity) can tolerate it enough to back Shrewsberry and Ivey or go in a different direction.

No, turning it back in a year cannot be the solution. But is it worth spending more on basketball when football powers the athletic department?

Many people have reposted your “prediction” that Notre Dame could leave the ACC and enter a scheduling deal with the Big Ten/SEC without necessarily understanding the context of the article in which it appeared. On a scale of 0 to 100 on a factual basis, with 0 being “aliens landing on the White House lawn tonight” and 100 being “Marcus Freeman will be Notre Dame’s head coach tomorrow morning,” how would you rate this? —Stefan M.

To be clear, our editors asked us for a “Bold Prediction,” with the emphasis more on “Bold” than “Prediction” for next season. Three years ago, my bold prediction was that Michigan would win the national title and Jim Harbaugh would jump back to the NFL (it worked). Last year I went for something similar: Texas wins the national title and Steve Sarkisian goes to the NFL and then puts Arch Manning at No. 1 (not quite).

I suppose I could have gone with “head coach wins national title, goes straight to the NFL” again, but that would have meant taking a coaching search in January.

As for the prediction I made, it’s both a tall order and the kind of question Bevacqua must have answered. It would be costly if Notre Dame were to leave the ACC, and if the Big Ten were to accept the Irish as a partial member, it would mean the conference would swallow some of its pride. There’s the matter of the other sports that fit into the Big East, which wouldn’t be straight forward. So yeah, this all has huge reach, especially if Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti is still in control. Trusting Notre Dame’s athletics future to a league that has tried to bring private equity into the conference while seeking a 24-team playoff…I’m not sure anyone here would be happy to go.

But.

If the next round of media rights deals happens at the end of this decade, wouldn’t these types of arrangements essentially print money for Notre Dame, the Big Ten and the SEC? The College Football Playoff will almost certainly be expanded by then, adding more play to the regular season. It’s no secret that NBC and CBS won’t get better stock to include in their Big Ten contract. And considering how much NBC is paying Notre Dame, will the network get what it expected with next year’s schedule?

Notre Dame already has the Clemson series locked up, regardless of its affiliation with the ACC. Could there be a similar deal with Miami or Florida State? Let’s create a future schedule of three Big Ten games, three SEC games, Clemson, an ACC school, Navy, Stanford and two Group of 5 games. That’s seven home games and five road games per season.

Am I making this seem infinitely simpler and more simplistic than it really is? Naturally! But what else should we do in the low season?

What is the modern Notre Dame record for first-round picks in a single draft? Over/under 3.5 first-round picks in the 2027 NFL Draft?

The modern record is four first-round picks after the 1992 season: Rick Mirer (2), Jerome Bettis (10), Tom Carter (17) and Irv Smith (20). The following year, the Irish had three first-round picks: Bryant Young (7), Aaron Taylor (16) and Jeff Burris (27). Since then, there have only been three drafts in which Notre Dame had two first-rounders: 2012 (Michael Floyd and Harrison Smith), 2016 (Ronnie Stanley and Will Fuller) and 2018 (Quenton Nelson and Mike McGlinchey).

In fact, Freeman produced just one first-round pick over his first three years as Joe Alt went No. 5, with Jeremiyah Love a lock to be Freeman’s second this spring.

I would bet big on the bottom a year from now if Leonard Moore, CJ Carr, Boubacar Traore, Adon Shuler, Tae Johnson, Anthonie Knapp and Bryce Young could all leave for the NFL. From that group, seeing Moore, Carr and Traore play in the first round next year isn’t a big deal, but history says the odds aren’t that good… at least for the foreseeable future.

But in three or four years, when the new freshmen will start to look into the prospects? The number of incoming five-star prospects should put Notre Dame in a better position to extract multiple first-round picks, similar to the days of Lou Holtz. I just wouldn’t bet on Notre Dame winning three first-round picks a year from now.

With CJ Carr being hyped as a Heisman candidate, the depth behind him is unnerving. Blake Hebert, Noah Grubbs or Teddy Jarrard don’t seem ready to step in. Will Notre Dame regret not landing a more experienced backup in the portal? – Daniel J.

I’ve never understood the appeal of a quarterback coming to Notre Dame this offseason just to sit behind Carr while the coaching staff would prioritize the development of Grubbs and Jarrard over you. Would getting a veteran FCS quarterback help Notre Dame next season? Naturally. But the recruitment of Braden Atkinson (same class as Grubbs) seemed bizarre, both because of his talent and his chances here. The fact that Atkinson ended up at Oregon State spoke volumes about how other major programs viewed him.

In an ideal world, Notre Dame would have kept Kenny Minchey like they kept Steve Angeli a year earlier after bringing in Riley Leonard. But there is speculation that Kentucky will pay Minchey’s starting starter fee of around $2 million, which is an economic non-starter for Notre Dame’s roster budget, especially since Carr is worth more than that, let alone a secondary that is expected to cost north of $4 million. There is only so much money available, and that money must be played.

I think Notre Dame made the right decision investing in portal additions at defensive line, defensive line and wide receiver. If Carr is injured next season after a sprained ankle or a concussion (e.g. injuries after two games), Notre Dame will be in big trouble. That’s true for most NFL and college football programs, with a few exceptions, like Ole Miss last season.

To quote former Indianapolis Colts offensive coordinator Tom Moore on why the backups behind Peyton Manning didn’t get more practice work: “Guys, when 18 drops, we’re f-ed, and we don’t practice f-ed.”

Not to compare Carr to Manning…but that sentiment will hold true for Notre Dame next season.