Being located in a lousy college town in the middle of nowhere where you are held to account for academic and behavior standards limits the list of kids that even have to want to/can do to be at Notre Dame. Then we have to recruit them into that versus the coddling/look-the-other-way/pandering environments at 90% of Power 5 schools.
It is what it is.
The bigger problem is that we don't do well enough with the talent we do have.