I was listening to the post-game analysis from the "Blue and Gold" podcast.  During episode "Notre Dame football vs. Ohio State postgame reaction | national championship game | Irish fall 34-23", one of the hosts said this (circa 1 hr 19 min):

There's no standards at Ohio State, zero.  The only standard is the lowest one for the NCAA.  That is the standard.  It's a JUCO academically.  It just is.  How do I know?  Because I've had guys recruited by Ohio State, and I know.

This struck me as odd right off the bat.  Often times we go head to head with ND for recruits.  Sometimes we win, sometimes they win, but it's largely the same candidate pool.  I wondered if this could be quantified.  Test scores, GPA...too complicated.  Then it hit me - Rivals maintains offer lists for all recruits.

If I'm a ND fan, I'd want to know this: "how many of the dudes who beat our ass were outside our recruiting pool?"  I looked at starters on both sides of the ball - I tallied 13 offensive "starters" (Judkins & Henderson were essentially 50/50, and then we played Montgomery/Tshabola/Siereveld across the 2 guard spots).  Then for the defense, I did the 11 starters of the base 4-2-5.

Offense

Of the 13 'starters', 10 had ND offers.  Wow, that seems like a lot!  But, that leaves three players off the list - maybe they were the difference makers?

• Will Howard: but wait...3 Ivy League offers out of high school.  Never mind.
• Tegra Tshabola: offers from UM, PSU and USC plus a few others.  He committed early, that might be the reason for the relatively short offer list (and no ND offer).
• Josh Fryar: he was a 3-star coming out and I speculate he wasn't offered due to football rather than academics.  6 other B1G schools and BC were fine with him.

Okay, that's the offense.  One could argue the defense carried the team most of the year.  I bet only a few of them were ND material.

Defense

Of the 11 'starters', 8 had ND offers.  Shoot, that seems like a lot too.  Three starters can make all the difference though.

• Ty Hamilton: approximately 20 offers, including 8 B1G schools & Vanderbilt. 
• Tyleik Williams: even more offers, including 6 B1G schools and Duke & Vanderbilt. 
• Denzel Burke: I counted 7 former PAC-12 schools (Burke is from AZ) plus some others, e.g. Texas. 

So roughly 15 minutes of research would suggest the ND podcaster is full of it.  Please check my research, ask questions, add your own research.  I'm absolutely floored that an ND man would talk out of his ass.  They represent such a high standard of excellence, I'm still shaking my head.  If any ND lurkers have made it this far - your team played well and had a good season.  No need to fish for nonsense excuses.