There has been some understandable confusion among media and fans about how many of Notre Dame's allowable 15 spring practice sessions the Notre Dame football team will use this year, due to the elongated 16-game 2024 season with its deep spillover into 2025, and the late date of Easter this year.
Let me not bury the lede (lead) and get right to the point. Then we can work backwards on what created the confusion.
Notre Dame will take advantage of ALL 15 ALLOTTED practice opportunities. Fighting Irish Media has asked all media NOT to share all the dates, but they're fine with us highlighting some key ones.
The first practice is Wednesday March 19. The last practice will NOT be the Blue-Gold Game on April 12. There will be some practices staged after that. This helps alleviate a compressed schedule, with the odd late Easter placement eliminating the ideal weekend for the Blue-Gold Game. The media has a wrap-up session with head coach Marcus Freeman on Wednesday, April 23, so all spring practices will have been completed by that point.
So where did the confusion come from? In the initial communication, a media schedule was laid out with interview opportunities after 10 practices, including the Blue-Gold Game. And those practices were labeled "Practices 1-10." When I asked associate athletic director for football performance John Wagle at his press conference on Thursday about the actual number of practices, he declined to be specific. I think he just didn't want to overstep his bounds and leave that to Marcus Freeman. But I think he probably regrets now not bringing clarity to that, since we don't have a date with Marcus until after practice on March 19.
Hopefully, this makes things clear, but ask away if it's not.
Finally, I plan to do a story off the Wagle presser sometime this weekend and using some data I had researched after the season. I'll work that around my WBB coverage as ND could possibly play each of the next three days in the ACC WBB Tourney.
Let me not bury the lede (lead) and get right to the point. Then we can work backwards on what created the confusion.
Notre Dame will take advantage of ALL 15 ALLOTTED practice opportunities. Fighting Irish Media has asked all media NOT to share all the dates, but they're fine with us highlighting some key ones.
The first practice is Wednesday March 19. The last practice will NOT be the Blue-Gold Game on April 12. There will be some practices staged after that. This helps alleviate a compressed schedule, with the odd late Easter placement eliminating the ideal weekend for the Blue-Gold Game. The media has a wrap-up session with head coach Marcus Freeman on Wednesday, April 23, so all spring practices will have been completed by that point.
So where did the confusion come from? In the initial communication, a media schedule was laid out with interview opportunities after 10 practices, including the Blue-Gold Game. And those practices were labeled "Practices 1-10." When I asked associate athletic director for football performance John Wagle at his press conference on Thursday about the actual number of practices, he declined to be specific. I think he just didn't want to overstep his bounds and leave that to Marcus Freeman. But I think he probably regrets now not bringing clarity to that, since we don't have a date with Marcus until after practice on March 19.
Hopefully, this makes things clear, but ask away if it's not.
Finally, I plan to do a story off the Wagle presser sometime this weekend and using some data I had researched after the season. I'll work that around my WBB coverage as ND could possibly play each of the next three days in the ACC WBB Tourney.
