In any professional relationship in life, business will always try to do better if they can. “Better” isn’t just a one-off in terms of talent.
Does someone else have more talent? Okay. Do they fit in with the culture you have set? Do they cost more/less? Do they have a higher ceiling?
All those things factor into making a professional change, and if they meet at the right intersection, someone incumbent is gone and someone new is in. It isn’t simply, “can I do better?” It’s “can I do better, and does ‘better’ have any interest in being here?”
Which brings us to the curious case of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. The Irish have joined what’s basically been a 2016 death spiral on all accounts, dropping their latest affair to scuffling Stanford, rendering them 2-5.
Naturally, whenever success isn’t happening at a select few programs, the torches and pitchforks come out en masse on whoever the coach is, in this case, Brian Kelly.
Over the next several weeks, there will be plenty of discussion about whether or not Kelly should be jettisoned, and if so, for who. It’s crucial in any relationship-severing that the severer starts to think about who actually replaces the person you’re letting go of, because this isn’t dating … someone has to fill that spot.
Then you go ahead and start thinking, if not Kelly, then who? ND has muddled around with a myriad of coaching hires since the most recent glory days of Lou Holtz, either on the head-scratcher level (Charlie Weis) or the decent but not elite level (Tyrone Willingham).
Kelly was supposed to be the elixir to all of those mediocre HR department escapades.
When he was hired, you could hear the collective gnashing of teeth from rivals of the Irish. Kelly was 41-2 his last three seasons at Grand Valley State of Division II. He moved to moribund Central Michigan as his first FBS gig and had them at 9 wins in 3 seasons.
He then moved onto Cincinnati, where he went 34-6, including an historic 12-0 his final season there, bolting for ND before their bowl game.
If there was a can’t miss hire to be had out there, it was Brian Kelly. Now, in his seventh year, Kelly is 57-28, by all means successful by most measures. His off-field concerns a treated as the same as everywhere else … not a big deal when you’re winning, “OH MY GOSH THIS IS HORRIBLE” when you’re not.
It’s important to note, though, at some point, it’s not you, it’s me.
If a successful coach like Kelly can’t win at Notre Dame, then why not, and what are the issues that go beyond the talent of a head coach that are prohibitive to consistent winning?
Moreover, if you depart from Brian Kelly … who wants the job? Yes, I know, it’s Notre Dame, so someone will always want the job. But if you’re a big name coach looking at a situation where a celebrated big time coach came in and couldn’t get the job done, what’s the allure?
To be clear, Kelly isn’t going anywhere this year. This is his first possibly “bad” year, as all the rest have been littered at worst with 8-9 win seasons. It’d take another few seasons like this one to justifiably move on and still have potential elite coaches to want to come within a 500 foot gorge of being interested in taking the job.
The harsh reality, though, is that for whatever reason, the Irish are regressing at the moment under Kelly. The real questions are harder than just “do we have the right guy,” though. Notre Dame should be highly successful every year.
Is it academics?
The “they’re held to a higher academic standard with recruits” is always a good-sounding, self-aggrandizing argument, but it doesn’t really hold water when Stanford is doing what it’s doing and they’re losing to Duke at home.
Plus, the Irish under Kelly have recruited well. Does ND’s academics mean they have a little bit more difficult of a time filling out a roster, especially with in-state talent? Yeah, that’s a reasonable suggestion, but the idea that the Irish are held back by stringent standards is one that is always parroted around when we discuss every few years why Notre Dame isn’t Ohio State or Alabama these days.
Has the landscape changed such that they need to join a conference?
This is another one that tends to come up every few years even though the answer isn’t going to change and probably won’t ever change. The answer is: NO!
Financially, it’d be a lousy decision to make, as ND doesn’t have to do revenue sharing with anyone when it bolts into these high-paying bowl games. It’s also a lousy decision when you consider they have their own television contract, and even though just about every college football game is on television if you’re a fan of a P5 team, there’s something unique (and financially healthy) about having a contract where you know where all your home games are being aired on the same non-cable network.
Plus, with the ACC playing 6 games against the Irish right now annually (and when that runs out, they’ll either re-up it or find a new dance partner), you’re still getting enough P5 teams on the schedule. Even if they didn’t have that deal going, we’ll go out on a limb and suggest teams still would be lining up to play the Irish.
So … is it the scheduling?
This is the one that probably holds the most merit as to what may need to change on Irish Island.
It’s no secret that ND takes no weeks off, and that isn’t an insult to other programs. They’re not “taking weeks off,” but ND doesn’t have a series of games in its schedule where it’s just packing up a few would-be easy wins.
As competitiveness spans a wider range of teams on an annual basis (as evidenced by FCS teams upsetting FBS ones fairly routinely compared to 10 years ago), ND’s schedule becomes even more of a meat grinder because they don’t play any of these teams.
This year, their schedule includes 9 Power 5 conference teams and then a 10th game against annually powerful Navy.
The advice to ND before they go ax BK or even have discussions on the topic is that, unfortunately, they update the schedule with a few teams that are there specifically to get drummed but give the Irish the opportunity to run through the bench and not be as taxed all season.
When it comes to a slippage in success over multiple coaches, it becomes evident that the coach is a symptom, but not the full sickness.
Which takes us back to the original question. Can you do better, and if you can, does ‘better’ want to come? Seven years ago, ‘better’ was Brian Kelly. If that’s changed, so be it, but should change be enacted too soon, ND shouldn’t be surprised if the resumes turned in to replace BK aren’t up to the one they got all those years ago when he turned his in.
