Brian Kelly to Notre Dame
CFN Analysis
Pete
Fiutak
It's not Bob Stoops after all, Urban Meyer was never in play, Jim
Harbaugh was just a rumor, and Kirk Ferentz was never really a part of
the discussion.
Cincinnati's Brian Kelly will become the
next head coach at Notre Dame, and now the pressure is on to get the
recruiting ramped up, have a plan for 2010, and most of all, be solid in
the initial press conferences.
Charlie Weis's fatal flaw from the start was his arrogance with his
"schematic advantage," and while Kelly can't set the bar too low, he has
to prepare the fan base for a year of turnover and a year of work to get
to the place where Notre Dame football wants to be. Good luck with that
for a program that never shoots for anything other than being among the
elite.
However,
Notre Dame aimed too low.
There's no question that Kelly is one of the new stars on the college
football scene, having turned Central Michigan into the MAC's top
program and taking an afterthought of a Cincinnati team into a
BCS-caliber program that was a missed field goal away from playing for
the national title. His offense became one of the most efficient and
most effective in America no matter who was running it. Whether it was
Ben Mauk, or Tony Pike, or Zach Collaros, the Bearcats moved the ball on
the way to three double-digit win seasons, a 34-6 record with two BCS
appearances and two Big East championships. There's no question that
he's a great prospect, but Notre Dame didn't need to go for a prospect
when it had its chance to take a shot at a proven superstar.
The problem isn't that the Irish are going with Kelly, who might turn
out to be the next Urban Meyer, it's that it didn't appear that AD Jack
Swarbrick and the powers-that-be made an honest run at the real Urban
Meyer.
The rumors and inside information (from some very, very trusted sources)
made it a done deal that it was going to be Stoops, but that obviously
wasn't the case. Stoops is a lot of things, but he's not known in any
circles and in any way for being a liar, so when he continued to
vehemently deny that he wasn't going to leave Oklahoma, things just
didn't add up. At the very least, though, Notre Dame was thinking about
him. The same can't be said for Meyer.
There's no question that Meyer would be a dream fit for the Irish and
could've made a run at him after screwing things up the first time
around, and going instead with Charlie Weis after Meyer took the Florida
job. This was the one shot the program had of assuring itself a spot in
the BCS and in the national title chase year after year after year, and
now it's going to bank on Kelly, who has gotten Cincinnati to the BCS,
twice, but doesn't have the proven track record as a recruiter that
Meyer or Stoops have, and he hasn't actually proven he can take a team
to a national title. He was close, and he'd be preparing for Alabama
right now if that one final second ticked off the clock in the Big 12
Championship or if Hunter Lawrence had missed, but Meyer has won two of
them.
This was when Notre Dame could've gotten its star of stars. Tim Tebow is
leaving, Florida has to reload a bit and the SEC is getting nastier, and
it's going to be more work, more headaches, and more of a fight now than
it has been in past seasons. No, the Gators aren't going away, but this
was a run, a great run, and it's going to take a major effort to stay at
such a lofty perch with Alabama rocking and rolling, with Tennessee
improving, with Georgia reloading, and with LSU, Arkansas, Auburn, and
the rest of the league, outside of Vanderbilt, getting better and
stronger. In other words, Meyer might have wanted to be wooed, wined,
and dined and be shown that the grass might be greener in Indiana.
But now the focus is on Kelly, who openly campaigned for the job from
the start, made his move to say all the right things and be the coach
that could potentially turn Notre Dame into a superpower once again, and
he's going to be a great spokesman and figurehead for the Irish. He's
smart, quick, and he's going to be a good new face for a program that
had to live through the insufferable joylessness of the Weis regime.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the hire. This might be the right
coach and the right fit and the right time. But if Florida keeps on
playing at a national title level year after year, and if Kelly doesn't
get Notre Dame to the BCS on a yearly basis, and that's where the
expectations are set at now, there will be a segment of the Irish fan
base that will always wonder what might have been.