The room fell silent as soon as the phone finally rang.
They had waited a long time for that call.
Julian Love had felt their stares. From his family and friends. His Notre Dame teammates. His high school coach.
They surrounded him Friday night and again Saturday at his draft party in the Palmer House hotel in Chicago. And there they waited, stealing glances to see how he was holding up as name after name was called at the NFL Draft, just not Love’s.
“When everyone’s telling him he’s going in the second or third [round] and it didn’t happen, everybody in the room was a little disappointed,” said Tim Racki, Love’s high school coach at Nazareth Academy in LaGrange Park, Ill.