UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

First, while their Women's Track and Field team was always terrific, the Men's squad was not in the mid-90's. That made the scholarships for that sport a bit more expendable to the Athletic Department to have some flexibility with "borrowing" a few to help Football. Second, since their recruiting base has always been pretty fertile for skill-position talent, it was considerably easier for them to nab a couple of athletes each year locally, and spend their recruiting cash and evaluation time on the guys in the trenches. Not every school would have had that advantage back when it was legal.

Credit where due, it wasn't against the rules at the time, and it absolutely worked. They'd have never had Santana Moss or Reggie Wayne without it.