New face of Fighting Irish is anything but traditional

Take a good look and you’ll see the face of Notre Dame Fighting Irish football this season is hardly Irish at all.

It is as Samoan as Manti Te’o’s Polynesian features and as distinctly different as the elaborate cultural tattoo that extends from his left shoulder to elbow.

And for the 125th anniversary season of the storied Notre Dame program, you’ll find him on the front of the annual football media guide.

"He’s such a great representative of our program," head coach Brian Kelly admiringly told reporters as the Irish opened preseason camp earlier this month.

While Te’o’s cover-guy prominence is befitting someone who has led the team in tackles the last two seasons and will likely finish among the school’s all-time leaders in the category, there is more to Te’o’s placement than the considerable numbers. More even than the soaring expectations and potential that have earned him first-round forecasts on projected NFL Draft lists and places on a host of preseason All-America teams and national awards watch lists.

People under the Golden Dome will tell you that Te’o’s out-front status is as much a reflection of the linebacker’s unmistakable leadership as anything. Not just his words, though they have come to take on the voice of authority on the field, but the quality with which he goes about preparation and play.

"Manti is holding his peers to the same level he holds himself and he’s being vocal about it," said Kelly, who wholly endorses the concept.

It is a position the now

6-foot-2, 255-pound Te’o has grown into in his four years at the school. The 4,330 miles between his Laie home and South Bend, Ind., barely hints at the distance Te’o has traveled from wide-eyed freshman to admired veteran and keeper of ages-old Irish defensive tradition. The 11 pounds he has packed on hardly sum up the growth that has taken place over his 36 starts and 324 tackles.

The highest profile linebacker recruit to Notre Dame since Bob Crable 30 years earlier, Te’o’s 2008 signing was heralded in the school paper, The Observer, as "The Manti Commeth."

And even with that kind of a buildup, Te’o hasn’t disappointed. Already future Irish, who have a tweet-age love affair with his bruising style of play, are asking for the opportunity to wear his No. 5 jersey. It is a measure of Te’o’s impact that linebacker Alex Anzalone of Wyomissing, Pa., one of Notre Dame’s highest profile pledged recruits for 2013, has not only asked to wear Te’o’s number but promised to uphold its significance, tweeting, "Thanks for setting the bar for us LBs to try and reach man!"

That kind of impact is not lost on his current teammates as Kelly challenges Te’o to take on a role that goes past being the backbone of a rebuilding defense this year and beyond the 128 tackles and five sacks of last season.

"When he came here, he said, ‘It’s hard for me to be vocal,’ " Kelly recalls. "Well, he’s that guy now, he’s that senior, he’s that leader. So I would say that’s probably stood out more than anything else. He’s holding others to the highest standards that he sets for himself."

Because of those demands, the ambitious schedule and the visibility that surrounds Notre Dame, CBSsports.com touts Te’o as the "most valuable non-quarterback in college football" this season.

Kelly just knows that Te’o, who turned his back on early NFL Draft entry in the spring to return to South Bend, "… has unfinished business as it relates to this football team. He’s really stepped up as a leader. More so I know we talk about leadership and talk about it in general terms but our big thing this year has been the A team, and the A team is about peer accountability."

Success at Notre Dame this season, it seems, will depend a lot on how much the Irish come to resemble their anything-but-traditional leader.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.