Several months ago, Notre Dame assistant coach Brian Polian noticed an article touting his status as one of the up-and-comers in college football recruiting. For about 10 seconds he felt good about himself. But by then, a bunch of buddies had noticed the story and did their best to deflate him.

"What's important to me is that the head coach thinks that I'm working hard and doing a good job, and that I can look myself in the mirror and know that I'm working as hard as I can out there," Polian said, "which I believe I'm doing an OK job."

OK might be an understatement. The fourth-year assistant, Notre Dame's special teams coordinator, primarily recruits California, and the Golden Domers have struck gold the last few years in California, specifically in the talent-rich Los Angeles area.

Seven scholarship members of Notre Dame's 2008 roster are California products, and ND already has received commitments for next year from two of the state's best — running back Cierre Wood and cornerback Marlon Pollard.

The secret? It's really no secret.

"To me, (recruiting) is one of the few places in college football where you can flat-out outwork people," said Polian, the son of Indianapolis Colts president Bill Polian. "You can do more than the other guy does. Every really good recruiter I've ever been around was a bulldog, and just worked at it."

Polian may be a bulldog, but he's enjoyed recruiting success in an area that is guarded by recruiting's version of the pit bull — USC. The Trojans have convinced countless southern California standouts to stay at home, owing a large part of their on-field success to protecting their turf.

Polian refuses to be intimidated.

"Do we fight some battles and lose them from time to time? Yeah, but that's recruiting," Polian said. "The minute you start saying, 'Well, this school is recruiting him, it's probably going to be an uphill battle,' then you've probably lost it before it's begun.

"So my attitude about going out to California is, hey, if we've found the right guy, let's go fight the fight and see what happens."

A prime example is current ND freshman quarterback Dayne Crist. Crist, from the Los Angeles area, committed to Notre Dame just a year after the Irish signed Jimmy Clausen, another LA-area product.

"If we had not recruited Dayne Crist because everybody told us there's no way you're going to get another really good quarterback out of southern California, if we had listened to all of the people that were telling us that, we would have stopped recruiting him," Polian said. "In terms of fighting those fights, let's go do it.You're not going to win unless you go fight the fight."

There are times, however, when the fight is just finding the way to a prospect. Polian's travel docket includes navigating Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, a four-hour flight, and then more navigation, this time LA traffic.

"In terms of the logistics of it," Polian said, "it's horrible."

But once Polian does arrive in California, he refuses to toss away the fact that he comes from the Midwest.

"I'm not going to change who I am in inner-city Los Angeles because I'm in inner-city Los Angeles. I'm still going to have country music on in my car, I'm going to talk the way that I talk," he said. "I'm not going to be something that I'm not, and I think people ultimately, both parents and prospects, respect that.

"Kids are smart. They know when you're trying to be fake and when you're trying to be something that you're not. And you just be who you are. I am who I am."

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