Notre Dame Football Recruiting: Gunner Kiel Has Put Irish Under the Gun

Gunner Kiel has heaped far too much pressure on himself and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football program by choosing to join them after spurning Indiana and LSU.

The Observer, a student-run daily newspaper on Notre Dame’s campus, confirmed that Kiel, a top quarterback recruit, is officially going to join coach Brian Kelly’s team and enroll in classes starting this morning. He will be living on campus by the end of the week.

He’s a 6’4”, 220-pound beast that was ranked No. 1 by Rivals.com coming out of East Columbus High School as a pro-style thrower. He instantly boosts the Irish recruiting class ranking but puts unnecessary expectations on them in a number of other ways.

His non-stop waffling up until the final hours of commitment really hurt his status in the court of public opinion. He initially committed to Indiana University to try and bolster one of the worst teams in the nation.

However, he decided that would be a bad move at some point and indicated that he would join the LSU Tigers.

Maybe watching them lose the national championship or possibly just a move closer to home changed his mind but Kiel decided to screw the Tigers over too and finally decided at the last minute he would join the Irish.

Now he has to excel when he takes over as the QB of the program or it will be an epic failure.

He has to succeed to prove doubters wrong, who already think—and have a basis for believing—he has decision making problems before even seeing the field at the college level.

It’s almost worse than when Jimmy Clausen committed to Notre Dame and gave a question and answer segment with the press in which he talked about getting four national championships.

Obviously, Clausen didn’t get a single one and is an NFL bust, which makes these kind of high-profile commitments dangerous.

Kiel did not call an audacious press conference, but the path he took to join the Irish is a story in itself that everyone is now aware of. He’ll be highly watched and criticized throughout his career for the move.