Agreed that demographics and cost are part of it, but I think it goes a little further that that. I coached youth football in the Toledo CYO league, which has produced NFL players over the years. In it's heyday, that league was crazy, several hundred kids, dozens of teams, very competitive with the league championship played at University of Toledo with thousands watching. It actually wasn't uncommon to have a college coach show up at the 8th grade championship game to identify early prospects. But along comes soccer, soccer moms, and the "everybody gets a trophy" generation and it's now barely rec-league quality. I think it's down to less than a dozen teams for all of 5th-8th grades. When I was coaching in that league, it was during this transition and we lost a lot of quality, athletic kids to the public and community leagues which were still very competitive (for example, DeVeaux Vikings, a 5th grade team at the time, had Shea Patterson at Quaterback before he moved to Texas with Deshone Kizer at Tight End!!!). The CYO leagues are what developed that youth pipeline into the Catholic High Schools and the Catholic High Schools worked with those leagues to keep that pipeline intact and help develop not only the players but also the coaching system.. Notre Dame could capitalize on that Catholic Continuity. Once the quality of CYO football dropped, the Catholic Schools more heavily recruited the public schools, regaining some of those Catholic kids, but losing most. A kid that goes to public school and/or plays in the public/community leagues and drops into a Catholic High School for a few years doesn't have that same view of the mystique of Notre Dame that kids did when you were immersed in it.