Note from the author: this was penned late Monday evening after the Kelly news broke but due to some meetings and phone calls it could not hit the press until now. Since then there have obviously been some significant developments but going to publish the raw version for the sake of posterity. See postscript below for an updated sentiment check. As always, thanks for reading – Ken
I don’t know what to say, really.
In 2016, I supported Jack Swarbrick’s decision to retain Brian Kelly as Notre Dame’s head football coach following a disastrous 4-8 season, mostly because there weren’t any strong replacement candidates readily apparent. There were plenty of good arguments for Kelly’s termination at the time, but with hindsight any non-moron would agree that his retention was the right call. Since that nadir Notre Dame has hired a bunch of good coaches, recruited a bunch of good players, and won a bunch of games. NDFB is in as good a place as it’s been during my sentience (which encompasses the post Davie epoch), and that is good and it is pleasant. He didn’t start the fire but Brian pulled the lamp from under the bushel and for that he deserves a ton of credit (and, yes, gratitude).
This is where it gets a little complicated, so listen up. In addition to some good coaching by Kelly, a couple really important things have gone Notre Dame’s way over the last few years. The ACC (of which the Irish are a de facto member) and the recurring characters on the schedule (Stanford, Southern Cal, Navy) have been god-awful. Sprinkle in a couple games against Bowling Green et al, and a lot of Kelly’s wins over the last few years were pretty much free spaces on the board. Perhaps more importantly, and this is really easy to forget, the Irish have won a lot of close games against some of those god-awful teams. The venerable 2018 squad was lucky to squeak out one possession lower-case w’s against the likes of Ball State, Vanderbilt, Pittsburgh (post Kenny football, pre Kenny Heisman), and a mediocre USC team; the 2019, 2020, and 2021 seasons similarly all look very different if single plays break against the Irish. The point here isn’t really to diminish what Kelly has accomplished, nor is it to suggest I’m glad he’s leaving, because I’m not. We’ve talked a lot about how fond I’ve been of the status quo at Notre Dame, given some of the headwinds the football program faces, and that hasn’t changed. The formula BK discovered – rehabilitate your program with a bunch of wins against bad teams, sneak into the playoffs on brand as much as merit and take your chances from there – is a good one; in fact, it’s one that almost certainly drew Lincoln Riley to Los Angeles from SEC-bound Oklahoma.
But it actually kind of does matter what they say in the papers – Notre Dame has not been competitive in the handful of big games it’s played in under Kelly. Over this fun five year run, the Irish have exactly one top ten win (over a team that was missing both its and CFB’s best player) and have been slaughtered every time they’ve played an elite team in the postseason. The guy has been in South Bend a million years and won a billion games, yet much of the fan base will be relieved to see him go and… can you totally blame them? At his best he’s bland and at his worst he comes across like a complete jackass. He’s not a young, charismatic genius akin to Riley (ND will certainly have to deal with some transfers and decommitments, but is there really any fear of an exodus to Baton Rouge like the one taking place from Norman to LA?), nor is he a football maniac like Kirby Smart or Saban (or even Harbaugh ffs). He’s a really really good coach, but somehow only in America’s second poorest state is he worth $10mm a year. While it drives me crazy when the Notre Dame administration doesn’t reinvest in the program, this is probably a reasonable place to draw the line. We’ve heard Brian’s song, and it’s a good tune, but it’s not better than the rest.
If you’re tasting hints of equanimity, it’s because, unlike in 2016, the program is in a good place, and Sophisticated Jack has some excellent replacement candidates to choose from. As for me, I like current defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman for the job of Dick Corbett Head Football Coach. He’s young and charismatic and a genius, and in less than twelve months on the job he’s proven you can get elite talent to South Bend if you try hard (something Kelly rarely does on the recruiting trail). He’s beloved by his players and he led the Irish to a top ten finish in scoring defense this year. He’s got six kids with his catholic wife and people (not me, though I agree) are saying he looks like a more handsome John Legend. Sure, he’s been a Power Five coordinator for just one season and it’s a play with plenty of risk to the downside, but fortune favors the brave, even if bravery was Plan B. We’ve always known that it will take an elite recruiter as head coach for the Irish to join CFB’s cartel of elite programs. If Freeman is that guy, ours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.
I guess the takeaway, as always, is that the world is a complicated place, and a few things can be true at once. Notre Dame needs to invest more in the football program, but it doesn’t need to throw good money after bad. We’d be better off if the stability Brian Kelly brought to South Bend was still intact, but our chances of winning a natty may actually increase with his departure.
I can be grateful for Kelly’s contributions to Notre Dame, but I will never want someone to fail more than I want him to fail in Louisiana.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
News broke Wednesday evening that Freeman would in fact be elevated to head coach. Please see below for my thoughts.
