Chuck Muller Resigns at Notre Dame (GP)

[RoverNation05]

Interesting development in the Lehigh Valley 2A scene. As the headline indicates, the head coach of this year's D11 2A champ resigned this afternoon after 7 years on the sidelines. H

Notre Dame went 11-2 this year, after going 19-82 from 2005-2014. The transformation was largely aided by the closing of Pius X and Notre Dame being the "refugee" program for most of the Pius players. This also included Pius X head coach Phil Stambaugh, who took over at ND's quarterbacks coach.

I'm assuming Stambaugh will quickly be promoted and this was in the works as soon as he took the job. He played at Pius, then was an FCS All American at Lehigh and got a cup of coffee in the NFL with the Jaguars then played in NFL Europe before coming back to the Valley and taking over his alma mater.

The rumor mill up here was that Liberty was interested in Stambaugh when he was available, but he's been a Catholic school his entire life and ND with him as the head guy would be very interesting. He's a spread guy and quarterbacks whisperer, and always had great talent at the position at Pius. But only so many kids want to play Single-A football, and less kids from the Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton/WesternNJ area want to go to the slate belt to do so. Notre Dame is located in Easton on the border of Palmer and Bethlehem Towmship and plays in a better league and bigger division. I'd think that would be a more palatable option for kids who want to play for him, and it'll be interesting the kind of talent Notre Dame gets.

 

[D1 Transplant]

Rover,
Could be very interesting. Lots of talent available with the right coach in place for Notre Dame. I can see talented QB's from Easton's feeder pee- wee programs looking at Notre Dame as a viable option to Easton.

 

[RoverNation05]

I mean, between Julian Spigner, Davion Kidd-Jackson, and Tre Jordan, it's not like the best kids who live in Easton and played in the feeder programs are playing quarterback for us now anyway. The last truly excellent quarterback here was Justin Pacchioli, and he played running back until 9th grade.

But there's obviously the probability that Easton is going to lose kids to Notre Dame going forward if they're going to be really good year in and year out. Stambaugh's a great coach, winning teams with wide open offenses are fun to play for, and if you transfer out, you also don't have to play against your friends in conference play like if you went to Becahi or ACC (it wasn't an accident Freddie Simmons got ejected for fighting in two different Becahi-Easton games). Stambaugh's certainly the real deal. I actually think the program this might hurt the most is Bethlehem Catholic, because there is a much more realistic path to Notre Dame competing for state titles (no Imhotep/Wood in their classification) and if you have the choice of playing for Phil Stambaugh or at Bethlehem Catholic, that's a no brainer.

Right now the Easton kids Notre Dame gets either want to play football and can't crack the lineup at Easton or they're lifetime Catholic school kids who were never going to go to Easton in the first place (Dan Tavani being the best example, he would have been a nice little addition to our 2003 team though...). That probably won't be the case anymore.