Who Will be the Next Coach at Notre Dame

That's true . It's why he ended up at Miami.

 

On paper, they didn't mean anything. But do you think Clemson fans and players, ACC Champions or not, are going to enjoy walking around the state hearing about how they got beat by a pretty mediocre South Carolina team? Do you think Georgia Tech fans and players, ACC Champions or not, are going to enjoy walking around hearing about how they lost to a downright shit-tastic Georgia team all year?

I don't care what's at stake the next week. They weren't overlooking the other team.

 

The thing about BK is that he's perfectly fine about beating you 50-40, that is, he's more concerned about making sure his offense is better against your defense than vice versa.

One thing that might, might, work against Kelly are some public statements he made early in his tenure at CMU. What happened was a bunch of DeBord's players participated in the beating death of a man outside a Mount Pleasant bar the summer before Kelly's first season on the job. They then started lying to investigators and clamming up.

Kelly told the Freep that, essentially, the reason the players were uncooperative because of their race and socio-economic background.

"A number of them were African-Americans that had been in that culture of violence, and they’re taught to look away,” Kelly told the Free Press. “This is a culture that they are immersed in.”

 

Wouldn't those kinds of statements only serve to help his cause in terms of fitting in at Notre Dame and being embraced by the fans?

 

Perhaps, but I figure there's also the risk that if too many ivory-tower types are in the decision-making process that it could weight against him.

 

Kelly has also beefed up his own college football playing experience which could prove to be embarrassing to a school like ND.

 

I can't see ND going the NFL route right after canning Weis.

Plus, Coughlin is still employed by the Giants. I would guess ND would want their coach in South Bend asap. They aren't going to wait for the Giants to play out the string.

 

It's the whole "stop snitching" mind-set, and he was right.

Kelly's statements were whipped up into a major catastrophe by old-school insiders in coaching searches at Michigan State and Michigan, two years apart, in order to knock an "outsider" (BK) out of the running, and grease the wheels to install a "favorite son."

At UM it really backfired, because they ended up with a guy who was much more of an "outsider" than Kelly ever was. Kelly had been coaching in the state of Michigan for close to 20 years; I don't think Rodriguez had ever set foot in the state before accepting the UM job.

 

They fired Paul Hornung as a commentator for making essentially the same kind of slip of the tongue and accidentally stereotyping all blacks instead of just inner-city blacks. One of those situations where we all know what Kelly meant, but it's not what he said.

Also - not fair to paint all ND people that way. Not fair at all It's not the most diverse university in America by any stretch, but at the same time few are more responsive to the needs of the impoverished, etc., etc., regardless of their ethnicity. Father Hesburgh, the long-time president, was a huge behind-the-scenes guy urging the Kennedy administration to get cracking on civil rights legislation. He was ahead of the times, not behind them. Also some history about ND fighting the KKK in Indiana.

 

Believe it or not but club programs do give letters. If that's the only questionable item from his playing days he should be fine.

 

Point taken. Perhaps I should have said he has yet to prove he can recruit the right kind of players on defense at Cincinnati, though he hasn't shown that he can't, either. Better?

 

All right, I'll elaborate. Yes, the money will be there at Notre Dame, and it's a very powerful motivator. Yes, the prestige will be there. With those, however, come an infinitely higher bullshit factor. And cold weather. Maybe the weather isn't a huge factor with Johnson, but he strikes me as a guy who could leave the bullshit for someone else. Tradition at Notre Dame you say? I'd agree it's matchless, but it's not like Georgia Tech has none.