The hiring of Tyrone Willingham should be a big boost to Notre Dame's recruiting efforts, both this season and down the road.

For starters, Willingham will help the school recruit African-American athletes more effectively. Notre Dame can boast the nation's highest graduation rate among athletes, traditions that are second to none, and a national TV contract, so other schools counteract those advantages by emphasizing to African-American prospects that Notre Dame has a very low percentage of African-Americans in its student body.

Willingham should help the school recruit elite African-American prospects such as defensive lineman Julian Jenkins of Atlanta, who recently had narrowed his list to Stanford, Michigan and Notre Dame. Even though his uncle played at Notre Dame, he was leaning to Stanford because of Willingham.

Also, competing schools have regularly pointed out to recruits that the Fighting Irish have had an archaic offense that doesn't prepare players well for the NFL. So Willingham's experience with the West Coast offense at Stanford should make a big difference in that regard. This should be especially true in the recruitment of big-name passing quarterbacks such as Chris Olsen of New Jersey, who had originally pledged to the Fighting Irish but had been taking other visits after Bob Davie's departure, and Trent Edwards of California, who had been leaning to Stanford.

As for Stanford, I think Willingham's departure will devastate the Cardinal's 2002 class. I don't see any way the program can rebound from this now, with only a month or so to go before Signing Day. They could name an assistant coach right now to do damage control, but he won't have the reputation that Willingham has built over the past several years.

The Cardinal might be able to lure some of the big-name players who had been strongly considering Stanford if they move quickly to hire a big-name coach. More likely, those players will now start looking toward Notre Dame, since both schools have similar academic standards and recruit many of the same players.

Stanford was already having a subpar year recruiting, and losing Willingham at such a late hour will doom the Cardinal to having a poor class.

Tom Lemming is ESPN.com's recruiting analyst.