Some things don’t stop even in quarantine, most pertinently among them, recruiting. A couple weeks into this interminable stretch, Notre Dame extended an offer to consensus three-star offensive lineman Pat Coogan (Marist High School; Chicago), and three weeks later, he committed to the Irish on Wednesday afternoon to become the eighth member of the class of 2021.
Coogan chose Notre Dame over usual recruiting competitors Stanford and Michigan, as well as Ohio State, Oklahoma and LSU. Many of those scholarship offers came in the immediate aftermath of the Irish offer, though being quick to the party may not have been what distinguished Notre Dame; Coogan has been a longtime Irish fan and visited campus twice in 2019.