SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Luke Talich knew what he wanted, but that’s different than saying it out loud.
Ahead of the December signing period, the 6-foot-3 1/2, 190-pound safety from Cody, Wyo., had offers from Utah, Washington State and Oregon State. Accepting any one of them would have made Talich just the fifth football prospect from Wyoming to take a Power 5 offer in almost 30 years. He took official visits to Salt Lake City and Corvallis. Kyle Whittingham, Jonathan Smith and Jake Dickert made in-home visits. Talich could also have stayed home at Wyoming, where his father and uncle played linebacker, where his older brother plays the position now and where his cousin plays guard on the basketball team.
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But Talich wanted something else. All he had to do was tell his parents Jim and Jen. He wanted to walk on at Notre Dame, where the full cost of attendance pushes beyond $75,000. Talich was willing to pay a premium to be part of a program he had grown up adoring from a distance. He’d only visited South Bend twice, once for a summer camp where few knew who he was and again for last fall’s Boston College game, when the snowy weather was just fine for a Catholic kid who grew up two hours east of Yellowstone National Park.
“I know that if I would have gone to any of those other schools, I would have always had that regret in the back of my mind, Geez, I could be playing at Notre Dame. I could have tried that,” Talich said. “I figured I’d give it a shot. If it works out, then great, but if it doesn’t, then I’ll be at peace with, at least I tried.”
Still, as a decision day approached for the schools that were going to pay Talich to come — not the other way around — it wasn’t easy for the three-sport athlete to make the ask. His family had made charts about the pros and cons of the programs under consideration, from academics to playing time to everything in between. School colors were even included.
“Luke is a very, very thoughtful kid. I think he felt selfish considering Notre Dame, he knew that was the reality,” Jim Talich said. “Jen and I really had to tell Luke, ‘Look, chase your dreams, this comes around once in a lifetime. If you feel something different in your heart about Notre Dame, that’s your answer.’
“When he decided, it wasn’t like, ‘Hey, can I borrow the car, and oh by the way, can you pay for my education?’”
Calling the Pac-12 coaches who had offered him a scholarship was another stress test of his decision. Some coaches were supportive of Talich chasing his goal. Others were not.
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“Those phone calls are tough, and you have to say you’re going to take a shot at some school who hasn’t been recruiting me as hard,” Talich said. “It just came down to that regret thing. I would have regretted going somewhere else.”
Now comes the next hard part for Talich, who will enroll at Notre Dame as a preferred walk-on this summer. During his unofficial visit to Notre Dame in November, the recruiting staff pitched the idea of the Walk-On Players Union (WOPU), the ad hoc fraternity Talich could join, which has turned out multiple scholarship players like receiver Chris Finke and linebacker Joe Schmidt. Talich wanted no part of it. He told Notre Dame his goal was to be on scholarship by the end of his freshman year, if not the end of his freshman season.
Talich understands the scholarship math: the 85-man roster limit, the transfer portal, the Irish staff’s constant push to enhance the roster. But if he’s going to make this kind of bet on himself to come to Notre Dame, what’s another wager that he can earn a scholarship in six months?
“Notre Dame said they have five guys leaving between the safety and linebacker room. So they have five scholarships opening up. And so they think that I’ll be better than any 2024 safety that they want,” Talich said. “So that’s the kind of their plan for me right now. Obviously, I’d have to prove that to them.
“My parents said they’d help me out just with the school because the school is very, very expensive. They’d help me out for a year. And so they kind of gave me a deadline. Obviously, I could go into debt, I’m not really planning on doing that. My plan is to try to prove it year one that I earn a scholarship and go from there.”
Considering how quickly Talich went from Notre Dame fan to Notre Dame football player, maybe that timeline isn’t as ambitious as it might seem.
The first time Talich visited Notre Dame was for a general prospect camp — the type of event where he had to make the coaches notice him, not the other way around. He wanted to see the campus and to understand the distance between his game and the talent the Irish staff wanted. At the time, he had no scholarship offers and figured he would eventually join his brother at Wyoming.
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Talich grew up with Notre Dame stickers adorning his bedroom. He painted those walls gold, too. When a high school coach asked him before his sophomore season about his goals to play college football, Talich reflexively said Notre Dame. The coach wondered what his second choice might be.
The Talich family arrived at Notre Dame a couple of days early to explore the campus, which was on summer break. It felt like they had the place to themselves, visiting the Grotto and ducking into the Basilica. Talich was more a tourist than a recruit. When the camp wrapped up, it didn’t feel like much had changed. Talich wasn’t sure he’d made an impression. His contact with Notre Dame football didn’t go through coaches but through analyst Caleb Davis, who assists recruiting coordinator Chad Bowden.
“We we got back home we felt a little disappointment,” Jim Talich said. “We were hoping for more love from the coaching staff. We came a long way, spent a lot of money, we wanted to be evaluated. How did he do?”
Talich didn’t know, and Notre Dame didn’t tell him.
Jim Talich reached out to Davis to find out. The family knew a scholarship offer wasn’t realistic, and they weren’t asking for one. But how did a player who had only compared himself to competition in Wyoming stack up against at least the talent that had showed up for the camp in South Bend? When Davis double-checked Talich’s testing numbers, Notre Dame realized there might be some potential to a prospect who lived outside of any reasonable recruiting territory for the school.
It was enough to put Talich on Notre Dame’s radar — not as a scholarship candidate, but at least as somebody worth tracking. Davis and Bowden started checking in every few weeks.
“They were clear from the get-go that the ’23 class was maxed out,” Jim Talich said. “But we wanted to stay in contact, just to be sure. You never know.”
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While Talich had been checking on a dream at Notre Dame, his high school head coach Matt McFadden had been trying to broaden his recruiting horizons. McFadden had an old college roommate on staff at Oregon State, and there was an invite-only megacamp approaching in Ogden, Utah, designed for prospects who might go overlooked in a part of the country not stocked with Power 5 talent. McFadden scored an invite for Talich. All Talich had to do was the same stuff he’d been doing around Cody the previous three years while starring at a high school with about 600 students.
That contact at Oregon State followed Talich around the camp with a video recorder. He liked enough of what he saw to show the Beavers’ defensive coordinator. Washington State was there, too, and took notice. Weber State offered Talich before the camp ended. Oregon State and Washington State didn’t wait long to follow.
“If he was at a large school in California or Texas, he’d been a no-brainer. Everybody would be after him,” McFadden said. “He’s a low, low 4.5 guy. And he really moves, and he’s even faster on the football field.”
“Everybody at any level in Wyoming knew him, but not outside of Wyoming. When coaches have recruiting areas, Wyoming isn’t one of them.”
Recruiters now saw a high school quarterback and safety who could grow into a linebacker. The speed was becoming obvious, as Talich beat other prospects in sprint drills. Oregon State wondered if Talich could be a Wildcat quarterback. Notre Dame started to see a walk-on safety, but it knew the economics probably wouldn’t make sense with Power 5 schools now in play.
Still, Talich wanted to keep talking to Notre Dame, and Notre Dame wanted to keep talking with Talich. If Talich wanted to pay his way back to Notre Dame for an unofficial visit during the season, Notre Dame would be happy to provide the game experience.
The second time Luke Talich visited Notre Dame, no introductions were needed.
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Caleb Davis made the unofficial visit feel official, giving the family a campus tour via golf cart. When Talich and his father wanted to sit in on a safeties meeting with assistant Chris O’Leary, Davis took Talich’s mother to the Hammes Bookstore to shop. Talich even got to attend Notre Dame’s Sunday night practice. Head coach Marcus Freeman came over to introduce himself and ask Talich if he believed he could make Notre Dame better.
“This is insane,” Talich thought.
It’s not that Notre Dame didn’t want Talich as part of the program; the staff just couldn’t quite get its head around Talich walking on over full scholarships elsewhere. During a meeting with Bowden, Notre Dame’s recruiting coordinator even stopped Talich to ask if the Irish really had a shot. Should he just cut off the presentation to save everyone time? Talich reaffirmed the Irish were in play. He had just travelled cross-country the week after his high school season ended and two weeks after having surgery to repair a broken collarbone. Visiting Notre Dame as a recruit was a dream come true, but Talich had long since moved beyond sightseeing around South Bend. He wanted to make sure Bowden knew that, too.
From there, Talich’s bimonthly contact with Bowden and Davis progressed to almost daily messages. If Talich was serious about Notre Dame, Notre Dame was going to reciprocate until the end. Talich needed up until the final hours to fully grasp what was about to happen.
“The night before signing day, we haven’t slept in a month with all these visits, we’re having dinner and we’re getting nothing from Luke. Nothing,” Jim said. “I told him, you’ve got to start making calls. Four programs are going to get a no. One gets a yes. And you’ve got about three hours to get this done. Luke may have always known it was going to be Notre Dame, but he certainly wasn’t telling his parents.”
That night Talich made those calls, telling Notre Dame he’d turn down full-ride scholarships to pay his own way. Talich had put enough work into getting Notre Dame to recruit him that he wanted to see out the story for at least another chapter.
“My first reaction, if I’m being honest, is you’re turning down an awful lot on a risk,” McFadden said. “The turning point was when he just said that you talk to our team about no regrets. This has been his dream. He said if I don’t take advantage of it, I would regret it. When a kid says that? Go get it, dude.
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“There’s no doubt in my mind it’s gonna pay off for him.”
Notre Dame believes that it will. On Wednesday night, Marcus Freeman and safeties coach Chris O’Leary visited Talich’s home in Cody to show a prospect who always wanted Notre Dame how much Notre Dame wanted him.
It’s hard to imagine a bigger statement of Notre Dame’s true interest in Talich than sending the head coach to see him. It’s a statement that is very much out loud.
(Top photo courtesy of Luke Talich)
