There has been some hand-wringing about losing out on recruiting battles to the likes of Clemson, but let's be honest that isn't the next step we need. What we need is to have consistently better than Penn State and Michigan. The pathetic thing is that both of those programs have been through the ringer in the time Kelly has been at ND, and yet we're still roughly on parity with them. I mean FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY Penn State was basically a dead program 5 years ago, and Harbaugh can't beat OSU. And yet from a recruiting perspective, they win more battles than they lose against us.
I think it's because there is nothing distinctive about this program that isn't on some old video reel. If ND wants to win, it needs to win the battles against UM and PSU consistently. Then (and only then) can we really have the conversation about our heated recruiting battles with Clemson. Let's get realistic people.