Did Notre Dame’s Latest Commitment Troll USC Upon Announcement?

Notre Dame had a rare recruiting stunner on Thursday, landing a commitment from four-star tight end Ian Premer of Kansas. Earlier in the day, multiple writers from Kansas State had logged crystal ball projections for the Wildcats to land his commitment, but by before dinner time he was committed to Notre Dame.

The first to be on his Notre Dame commitment was Steve Wiltfong of On3. Wiltfong has covered the Premer news as it developed Thursday and was the first with a written story on the surprising commitment.

In that story though, was Notre Dame's latest commitment firing a subtle shot at rival USC?

Premer telling Wiltfong that "Notre Dame is the place to be right now" is innocent enough on its own, but also happens to go perfectly in line with USC's recruiting motto.

If you look across USC's athletic social media pages, football included, "pLAce to be" can easily be found in several posts.

It's an innocent thing to say for a young man that's still in high school, and it could be entirely innocent, seeing as USC wasn't even a candidate in his final potential schools. It's also worth noting that Premer will almost certainly never play a regular-season game against the Trojans. However, I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me like him just a hair more if it was said like that intentionally.

And personally, I hope Notre Dame football will somehow survive post-Chad Bowden.