Rockne's Roundtable

Shane Walton

coachcft,

Smagala actually was part of five St. Laurence (Burbank, Ill.) players who came to Notre Dame in Lou Holtz's first season in 1986. The other were all linemen: Paul Glonek, Jeff Pearson, Mike Harazin and Tim Grunhard.

Glonek never did get admitted, Pearson transferred to Michigan State after his sophomore year in 1987, Harazin had a health issue — and the least touted "throw-in" was Grunhard, who became a superb leader. Smagala was recruited mainly by MAC schools, and was offered by Gerry Faust based on how he saw him run in summer camp. When Lou Holtz came aboard, he tried to talk Smagala out of enrolling, but his father wouldn't hear of it.

John Foley was in the St. Rita trio that year with John Zaleski (left school) and Jason Cegielski (transferred to Purdue).

Now THAT Lou, is an explanation of who was from where and how it went down. Very nice.

Even though my story had some factual flaws, sounds like even Lou had him with just a couple of stars. And he could have even gotten a couple years out of his DAD who I seem to remember, at 42 or 43, played college ball somewhere(obviously not big time Divvy 1). RB no less. Am I right Lou?

Rudy

In the late 60's, Mike Oriard was a walk-on who wound up starting at center, snapping the ball to Hanratty and Theisman and going on to play four years with the Kansas City Chiefs. He went on to get his Ph.D. in English from Stanford and teaches literature at Oregon St.

Frank Stams - he came out of nowhere and had a huge impact in NDs big games and eventual NC in 1988.

Shane Walton and Mike Anello

Welcome aboard. I do believe Anthony Johnson was rated pretty highly coming out of high school though

1. Zorich
2. Samardja
3.Shane Walton ( walk on if I recall correctly )

Zorich, Walton, samardja.

Giga,

Pinkett, Golic and Casper were highly recruited prospects.

Bleier, I'm not as sure, mainly because in the 1960s there was really less recruiting information.

Moriarty transferred to Notre Dame when he was 22 years old, coming from Santa Barbara Community College in 1980. His brother, Kerry, played in the 1970s at Notre Dame as a backup QB, and his grandfather also attended the school. Sometime in his high school years he was involved in a vehicular accident in which he was hurt pretty badly and, if I recall correctly, lost some of his hearing. But after rehabbing for a while and spending a year in JC, he went to the JC and then transferred to ND.

He was maybe the strongest football player ever at a time when weight training wasn't as year round. He was in the 460-480 bench press range, which was amazing back then, and rivaled only by Tom Thayer. He scored the first TD of the Faust era in 1981 on a TD pass from his roommate, Blair Kiel (Gunner's uncle). The next year he started off like gangbusters at fullback, rushing for 116 yards in the nationally televised win over Michigan in the first ND home night game, and then had 106 the next week in a victory over Purdue.

For whatever reason, his work load was scaled back thereafter. He was drafted in the fifth round by Houston and played nine years in the NFL, 1983-86 without Houston Oilers and 1986-91 with the Kansas City Chiefs.

Shark, got to meet him @ a Royals game when the Cubbies were in town and we talked just for a few minutes about football, awesome guy. His autograph is now in the ND shrine in my basement