20 and counting | by Pat

Notre Dame's recruiting efforts yielded another verbal committment when linebacker Morrice Richardson told the coaches he was coming to Notre Dame while on his official visit during the Navy game weekend. As he told Scott Kennedy of scout.com, it was "just the best place for me." In doing so, Richardson has become the 20th known verbal commit to the Irish.

Along with promising a national championship before he leaves, Richardson had high praise for the current Irish squad.

"It's a special team," he said of Notre Dame. "That's a special team right there."

Richardson plays defensive end for his Westlake team in Georgia but at 6'2" 228lbs was recruited at linebacker by nearly every school that offered him a scholarship. And there were plenty of schools that were after Richardson. He had offers from finalist Georgia Tech, Florida, Virginia Tech, Ohio State, LSU, Auburn, Alabama, Nebraska, and Oklahoma among others.

It seems that Richardson has always been around good football players. His high school has the most active NFL players out of any high school in the country and Richardson is cousins with Georgia Tech's star WR Calvin Johnson and everybody's favorite former Hurricane Michael Irvin.

As the recruiting class of 2006 fills up (with more good news potentially on the way today), I find it hard to believe that anyone will be able to top Richardson when it comes to this comment about Notre Dame.

"They have churches up there like Georgia has Waffle Houses."