Thursday, December 10, 2009

Notre Dame Hires Brian Kelly: Approve

Notre Dame fans' long nightmare is over. Hope fans who were enjoying the schadenfreude will remember it fondly. Because that's done. Notre Dame fans must be overjoyed.

In hiring Brian Kelly -- the school's best coach since Lou Holtz (and, I will argue, will be even better than Holtz in the long run) -- Notre Dame has re-emerged as a Top 10 football power.

Mark it down: Kelly will have Notre Dame in a BCS-level bowl game NEXT YEAR. And while I'm not sure he'll ever win a national title, he will have them in a BCS bowl game as long as Notre Dame gets an automatic BCS bid for earning 10 wins. 10-2 seasons will be the minimum.

I'm torn: I'm a classic Notre Dame loather -- but I'm a huge Brian Kelly fan. I'm bummed that Notre Dame will re-emerge as a football powerhouse, but I like that they will do it the "right way" -- Kelly's way.

But I buy the argument that it is in the best interests of college football that Notre Dame be very very good. I'm sure I will regret that next year when they're 11-1 and I hate them even more.

The Weis Era is a distant memory, as of Thursday night. The Kelly Era is here.

And it's going to be very very successful. Sucks for the rest of us.

-- D.S.

2 comments:

Eric said...

I'm not a fan of how coaches bail on their team before the seasonis over. Doesn't he still have a game to coach at Cincy? Cincy paid him a lot of money to coach their team this year and he's leaving before the job is complete. He coached Cincy to a big bowl game and leaves before the game? He's leaving Cincy in world of hurt.

I wish college football would just put a moratorium on the ability of schools to interview and hire coaches before the seasons over for every school. If it affects a recruiting period, change the period to occur after the bowl games then.

He's not the first coach to do this, but just the most recent example of it.

brian tudor said...

Dan,

Why don't you point out how Kelly hung his Bearcat team out to dry. He took UC's first ever 12-0 season and ruined the celebration for the kids by announcing he had accepted the ND job the day of the team banquet.
I used to respect you are a Journalist, but you are so biased and short sighted now you are just a blogger. Your columns and post used to be appointment reading, now this will be my last visit to your blog. Good luck.