Michael Floyd is going to make it to the fall, after all

Happy weekend, Irish fans: Your resident offensive nightmare, Michael Floyd, appears to have survived his brush with Notre Dame's shadowy disciplinary council with his senior season intact. From the South Bend Tribune:

Late Friday afternoon, the university's disciplinary arm stopped well short of the worst-case scenario for Floyd following his March 20 drunk driving arrest. The Office of Residence Life has decided against suspending Floyd for the 2011 season, according to multiple media outlets.
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Floyd reportedly will be required to perform community service as well as deal with whatever penalties the legal system and second-year Irish head coach Brian Kelly saw fit. Kelly indefinitely suspended Floyd on March 21. Neither Floyd, nor Kelly were immediately available for comment.

Given that this was the 21-year-old Floyd's third alcohol-related brush with the law (he had underage drinking citations in 2009 and 2010 in his home state of Minnesota), having his entire senior season wiped out by suspension was a possibility, if not probability, given past cases Res Life has handled.

Maybe tI should have said happy offseason, Irish fans. Floyd is the undisputed star of Notre Dame's offense in a pivotal season in Kelly's tenure, a perennial mismatch against smaller cornerbacks who gives his quarterback a wide margin of error and should hold every major school receiving record by midseason. He ranks alongside any returning receiver in the country for sheer physical potential, and his return was by no means a foregone conclusion: When former teammate Will Yeatman picked up his second alcohol-related arrest in September 2008, the Office of Residence Life suspended him from all football activities for the rest of the season, leading to his eventual transfer to Maryland; ditto Joseph Fauria, who was suspended for the entire fall semester the following summer for an unspecified incident, prompting a transfer to UCLA.

With the pros calling, Floyd was more likely to look into the supplemental draft or even the CFL than a transfer that would keep him off the field in 2011, anyway, but it looks like that's a question he's not going to have to answer.

Not that he's entirely out of the woods: There's still next month's court date for the latest drunk driving arrest, and the potential wrath of Kelly. Assuming Floyd keeps his nose clean, though, that's not likely to cost him more than a game or two before it's back to full speed ahead. The hardest part is past him.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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