The window at ND is ridiculously, painfully, small.

by FunkDoctorSpock, Your Nightmares, B* tches, Friday, February 03, 2012, 11:20 (5240 days ago) @ irishoutsider
edited by FunkDoctorSpock, Friday, February 03, 2012, 12:12

I'm sure some will read this as a "rah-rah", enabling, blindly supportive manifesto for Brian Kelly and mediocrity. But who I am aiming this at is the group in the middle, those who haven't completely made up their minds, in either direction, about this athletic administration and coaching staff.

One of the most fundamental problems is a set of expectations that match what is being achieved at Alabama, Florida, USC, etc., that is combined with a recent past that is more Michigan State, Stanford, etc.

In the three years before Brian Kelly took over, the football team went 16-21. In the five years before he took over, 35-27. In the ten years before he took over, 70-52. So that's a range of terrible to thoroughly mediocre.

There have been times when I silently wished that what idiots like Wilbon said was true, that Notre Dame was irrelevant. But because of the heights of our past, that just will never happen. Whatever happens, good or bad, at Notre Dame is done so in the spotlight of national interest and exposure. And at the right time and place, that can be an awesome positive. At other times, a crippling negative.

Kelly has gone 8-5 in each of his first two years. The pros and cons of those results have been dissected and debated endlessly both here and in all corners of the Notre Dame football universe.

What is factually undeniable is that Kelly has equaled, in two years, the total number of wins that the program managed in the three years before he took over.

What is factually undeniable is that Kelly took over a quarterback situation that was, in terms of experience and number of scholarship QBs on the roster, significantly worse than what Weis, Willingham, Davie, Holtz, or Faust did.

What is factually undeniable is that Kelly took over a defense that, in 2009, was quite possibly the worst in the history of the program.

What is factually undeniable is that Kelly took over a team that had won 6 games on the backs of, almost exclusively, two players. And those players were leaving early for the NFL.

What is facutally undeniable is that Kelly has made some painful mistakes over the course of his first two seasons.

The thing that concerns me most is that, in a time when college athletics and football in particular, is dominated by teams, and a league, that truly doesn't care about cheating, oversigning, paying for elite players, paying coordinators what head coaches in other leagues make, etc., the fan base is more impatient, more pissed off, more agitated, as a whole, then I can remember.

While the question remains as to whether Kelly can be an elite coach, I have little doubt that by his fifth year he will have a program that has a strong foundation and will be capable of moving forward at a clip that at the very least sees us winning in the area of 9 games per season. Is that THE GOAL? No, it's not. Is that what made Notre Dame in years gone by? No, it's not. But I think it's somewhere we have to get if we are ever going to have a shot at making it all the way back.

The fan base, and this could be my misreading of the situation, seems to consider Kelly's first two years a failure along the lines of what Michigan went through with Rodriguez. The idea that a coach that has gone 16-10 might be on the hot seat, whether it be real or imagined, is mind boggling. It's not like this is Ron Zook taking over for Steve Spurrier.

And it's not hard for natural born enemies of Notre Dame to pick up on all of this chatter. What scares me is that they, to even greater impact, will continue to use this self created angst and vitriol against us.

I don't know, maybe this is just me rambling, but I don't feel very good about ND's ability to suffer through the growing pains that I personally think the program has to endure in order to get back on our feet.