Gotta love Dave Clawson’s take on Notre Dame serenading Sam Hartman with “I Will Always Love You” as he left the field following the Irish’s 45-7 win over Wake Forest last week.
“They bought him and rented him for a year, and now they love him?” said Clawson, who recruited Hartman to Wake Forest, then coached him for five years before the QB landed at Notre Dame via the transfer portal.
“This is where college football is,” Clawson told reporters at his weekly presser.
Hartman has passed for 2,549 yards and 22 TDs for Notre Dame this season. His numbers at Wake under Clawson the past two years were an order of magnitude better – 4,228 yards and 39 TDs in 2021, 3,701 yards and 38 TDs last season, as Hartman led the Deacs to an 11-3 finish in 2021 and an 8-5 record in 2022.
Notre Dame is sitting at 8-3 with a game at Stanford left in 2023.
He’s back in college for a sixth season because he’s not much of an NFL prospect. Most draft boards have him either going as a late Day 3 NFL Draft pick or having to find a job as an undrafted free agent.
Going to Notre Dame made sense financially because the Irish could give him more money from NIL than Wake Forest could cobble together.
Clawson made clear that his comments about Hartman and Notre Dame aren’t hard feelings at the kid.
“Sam and I had a great discussion before the game and after the game, and I love the young man. I really do,” Clawson said. “I don’t blame him at all for what he did. That’s the system now. For him to have the opportunity to have that experience, and make that type of money in one year, who can fault him?”
It’s just, as Clawson said, “reality.”
“There’s no point in complaining about it,” Clawson said. “Here’s a guy that we recruited, and we developed. They’re putting a video on him saying, ‘We will always love you.’ Like, you only dated him for a couple of months. It can’t be love. We’re the ones that love him. We had five years with him. You rented him for a season.”
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Chris Graham
