SALINE, Mich. — CJ Carr made the rounds Thursday evening in the Liberty School auditorium, gray Notre Dame hat on and pressure off. The five-star quarterback from Saline High School who had grown up in the shadow of Michigan football had just committed to Notre Dame to play for a head coach who graduated from Ohio State. He bounced among a few dozen teammates and family members, posing for pictures, hugging familiar faces, walking on clouds.

Eventually mother Tammi called her oldest son to find “Papa” for one last picture. It had been a day. The Carr family was ready to close down the space, restacking chairs arranged for the audience. And so Lloyd Carr, the last Michigan head coach to win a national championship, stood up next to his grandson.

They smiled. Then, after a half beat, CJ Carr went for it, right arm around his grandfather the whole way. He took off that gray hat with the interlocking ND and put it on the head of Lloyd Carr, who promptly took it off and swatted it back in his grandson’s chest, laughing all the way.

“We’ll get there,” Lloyd Carr said, putting a bow on a commitment that frayed loyalties but not family.

Notre Dame has its quarterback of the future in Carr, a unanimous top-50 prospect and a five-star according to the 247Sports Composite. He’s the program’s highest-rated offensive prospect in more than a decade. Carr will return to Notre Dame this weekend to help recruit more pieces of its future. Michigan, for all the history pushing Carr to stay home, will watch him play in South Bend, a place CJ Carr felt was far enough away from home but not too far, a place with energy and dynamism under head coach Marcus Freeman and offensive coordinator Tommy Rees.

Make no mistake, CJ Carr was never going to Michigan despite what so many, including his grandfather, thought. In middle school, CJ once asked his father Jason — that’s former Michigan quarterback Jason Carr — how he could have grown up in Ann Arbor, played college football in Ann Arbor and never left Ann Arbor. CJ Carr told his dad that was crazy. He was going away to college. This was before he started playing tackle football in the seventh grade, before he blossomed into a national prospect a year ago.

Jason and Tammi still wondered. If their oldest son could add a chapter to the fairytale, would he?

“I knew in the back of my mind, he wanted to go away,” Jason said. “As he got into high school and we started seeing football is gonna be a thing for him, we thought maybe you get Michigan to sneak in there a little bit and he changes his mind a little bit. He never did.”

“We’re always going to be a Michigan family. He’ll always have a place in his heart for Michigan,” Tammi said. “But he wanted to go away. Every kid should have that chance, no matter what their last name is.”

That doesn’t mean Notre Dame was the default option.

CJ Carr made his first visit to Notre Dame a year ago for Irish Invasion, an invite-only summer camp the program uses as an evaluation tool. Offensive coordinator Tommy Rees liked what he saw, enough to offer a scholarship, following the lead of Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana, Nebraska and Central Michigan. Still, Rees was skeptical of this recruitment’s utility.

Both of CJ Carr’s parents went to Michigan. Both grandfathers were royalty there. Lloyd Carr was a national champion who tried to recruit Brady Quinn to Ann Arbor. “Almost got him,” he joked before the commitment ceremony. “Almost did,” Quinn confirmed. The other grandfather was Tom Curtis, a College Football Hall of Fame safety who holds the program’s record for interceptions.

CJ Carr insisted Rees recruit him. He was serious about looking around. He told Michigan State offensive coordinator Jay Johnson the same thing. Like Rees, Johnson didn’t always believe it.

Carr returned to Notre Dame for the USC game last fall. Again, the quarterback insisted. He wanted Notre Dame to recruit him. Now Rees was listening. Eventually he would cut up film for Carr, going over how he installed plays, how his quarterbacks read man coverage and what happens when the defense zone. Carr took it all in and spit the information back to Rees. While Carr was becoming hooked on Notre Dame, Rees was becoming hooked on Carr.

“Throughout the whole recruiting process, I was really looking at how these offensive coordinators coached their quarterbacks. And he was really second to none,” Carr said. “I really could see myself playing for him anywhere in the country.”

What Notre Dame lacked in the Carr recruitment was a head coach backing Rees up. Both CJ Carr and his father said they didn’t spend time with former head coach Brian Kelly at his first Irish Invasion or during the USC game weekend. When Notre Dame promoted Marcus Freeman to head coach following Kelly’s departure for LSU, that dynamic changed.

Carr returned to Notre Dame for spring practice earlier this year and met with Freeman. As much as Rees drove the recruitment, Freeman helped it get over the line. When Carr came back for Irish Invasion last Sunday night, Freeman found Carr during drills and grabbed him by the shoulders from behind. It represented a human touch to Notre Dame’s pursuit.

“Coach Freeman has been unbelievable,” Carr said. “Every visit that I’ve been on at Notre Dame, he’s met me and talked me through what they’re trying to do at Notre Dame. It’s special. It’s different, too. It’s not like anywhere else I’ve ever been. It’s inspirational when you hear him talk. It’s awesome.”

A day after Irish Invasion, Carr called Rees to commit. Then he got in touch with Freeman. During one of the calls, Carr was distracted by a blaring noise inside Notre Dame’s football office.

“All of a sudden, I hear a siren in the background,” Carr said. “‘Coach Rees, what is that?’ They had pulled the fire alarm. They were calling it the Carr Alarm. I thought that was really cool.”

The warnings inside the Michigan football offices were different, of course. But the Wolverines saw this coming, even if that makes it only slightly easier to digest. Jason Carr talked to head coach Jim Harbaugh before the announcement. Lloyd Carr said he’d call soon. CJ Carr thanked the entire Michigan offensive staff by name.

Michigan’s coaches had even come to terms with Carr’s exit by way of running backs coach Mike Hart. Michigan’s all-time leading rusher played high school football about 12 miles south of the Carrier Dome, not much farther than the distance between Saline High School and Michigan Stadium.

“Mike did a great job as the lead guy,” Jason said. “He told us he grew up right by Syracuse. He said, ‘If Syracuse won the national championship, I was never going there. I was going away. I get it.’ They were really, really great.”

The next question Carr must answer is the reclassification one, whether he should begin his college career six months early with the rest of the nation’s top-ranked recruiting class in 2023. For now, the answer is no: Carr plans to play two more seasons at Saline, then do mid-year enrollment about 18 months from now. But Carr also plans to continue taking online courses just in case his mind changes.

While reclassification would be a first at Notre Dame, both player and program are laying the groundwork for it to happen if both player and program want it to. Carr is old for his class; he turned 17 years last month while still a high school sophomore. He accumulated high school credits before starting high school and kept building that academic resume just in case.

“We’re gonna stay in the ’24 class,” Carr said. “I think we’re gonna take the classes just to give me the option, but as of right now there’s no plan (to reclassify).”

Notre Dame still doesn’t have a quarterback in its 2023 class, with its pursuit of Detroit five-star Dante Moore ongoing. Whatever optimism there was around Moore from Notre Dame earlier this year, it may be finite without another official visit scheduled to South Bend. While Carr returns to Notre Dame to recruit for the Irish this weekend, Moore will compete in a passing tournament and later pay an official visit to Texas A&M.

Jason Carr admitted they had been “monitoring” the Moore recruitment, but that doesn’t mean it impacted CJ Carr’s decision. He had enough on his mind already, figuring out how to turn down Michigan, how to commit to Notre Dame, how to do it all smoothly within a family of Wolverines that includes a former head coach.

“Notre Dame was the perfect place,” Carr said. “It’s not in my backyard, but it’s also not super far. And what they’re building over there is super special.”

Lloyd Carr can appreciate all this, even if he assumed it would turn out different. Whatever rivalry exists between the programs — they won’t play again until 2033-34 — there is no such friction with how much a grandfather supports his grandson.

As a Michigan assistant coach under Bo Schembechler, Carr made clandestine trips from Ann Arbor to South Bend to watch Notre Dame spring games. The Wolverines would scrimmage one week, the Irish would scrimmage the next. The Michigan coaches wanted to see but not be seen, searching for any advantage in one of college football’s great games. Lou Holtz even tried to hire Carr to Notre Dame’s staff early in his tenure, catching a high school-age Jason on the family phone for 15 minutes before Lloyd wondered who his son was talking to.

Lloyd Carr stayed at Michigan, of course. He became a champion. He watched his grandson grow into a national prospect. Now he’ll watch him at Notre Dame, no disguise necessary while getting used to this new reality. There might be some new apparel, too. Eventually. Like the former head coach said, he’ll get there.

“I’ll always love Michigan,” Lloyd Carr said. “But this is family. I’m just happy for him because he’s so happy. He’s so excited about the future.”