Five years ago at this time, sixth-year Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly knew what a main talking point would be when his 10-2 Fighting Irish were matched up against defending national champ and 11-1 Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl.

He recognized how many Fighting Irish faithful perceived Buckeyes head coach Urban Meyer as “the fantasy coach who got away” a little more than a decade earlier, so he was prepared when the media asked about it

“We’re going to wrestle — arm wrestle before the game — and whoever wins gets the Notre Dame job,” Kelly joked. “That’s just great talk for the fans, and Urban is a great coach. Urban’s still a young guy… Who knows? I’m not going to be here forever. Maybe he’ll get a chance one day to coach at Notre Dame if that’s what he wants.”

Ohio State went on to win that game, 44-28, on Jan. 1, 2016 — the start of the most miserable calendar year in football for Kelly. His Fighting Irish would finish 4-8 that season and his coaching star plummeted to the point where the damage from that campaign appeared too much to overcome.

Yet here we are four years later with No. 2-ranked and 10-0 Notre Dame in line for its second College Football Playoff bid in three years.

The 43-6 record (.878 winning percentage) from 2017-20 is the greatest four-year stretch so far by a Fighting Irish graduating class since 1949. The 1992 graduating class was 43-7 (.860), so even a loss next week to Clemson in the ACC Championship would tie that mark.

Notre Dame’s current 16-game winning streak is the best in the land, the 24 straight wins at home are the second-best since Notre Dame Stadium opened in 1930, the 32 consecutive wins over unranked foes trails only Alabama, and Kelly's Irish knocked off a No. 1 team this year (Clemson) for the first time in 27 seasons.

Kelly’s record from the past four season might even be considered “Urbanesque.”

“He’s a winner,” Meyer said this Friday on The Herd with national sports radio host Colin Cowherd. “This is not shocking that he is doing this at Notre Dame. He’s one of the most underrated coaches in the country.”

Both Cowherd — who in the past had been a skeptic about Notre Dame’s viability as a contender — and Meyer agreed that the Fighting Irish along with Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State have separated themselves from the college football field in 2020 amidst a pandemic, a testament to mental and physical toughness, and also strong leadership.

Through the years, Meyer and Kelly have maintained a cordial relationship, with Kelly even inviting Meyer to spend a few days at Notre Dame during 2011 spring drills as the main speaker at the annual Coaches Clinic. Upon arriving and seeing the new facilities and commitments to the infrastructure, that’s when Meyer recognized the Fighting Irish could become a power again eventually, particularly with Kelly at the helm.

“Is Notre Dame at times a tough sell?” Meyer told Cowherd. “It is. At other times it’s actually an easy sell because certain kids have grown up — the Catholic schools, that’s where a lot of great football is played across America. So he’s got a built-in advantage, but for the most part you have to go out-work people.

“He does not have a backyard [for recruiting]. These other programs, Ohio has Ohio, Texas has Texas, UCLA and USC have California… Indiana high school football is good, but the quantity is not there, so he’s a national recruiter.”

What Meyer especially appreciates is how since the turn of the century, Kelly first won consecutive Division II national titles at Grand Valley State (2002-03), next led Central Michigan to its first conference title in 12 years (2006), and then guided Cincinnati to back-to-back Big East titles, finishing 12-0 in 2009 before accepting the Notre Dame post.

“I’ve always appreciated the coaches that have won at all levels,” Meyer said. “I’ve always been a fan of Brian Kelly … I think he’s one of the top five coaches in the country.”

A college football analyst for FOX Sports the past couple of years, Meyer’s extraordinary 187-32 career record (.854) trails only Notre Dame’s duo of Knute Rockne (.881) and Frank Leahy (.864) on the all-time NCAA chart for winning percentage at the Division I level, and he won three consensus national titles by the time he was 50 (at Florida in 2006 and 2008, and Ohio State in 2014).

Meyer also joined Nick Saban as the lone coach to win a national title at two different schools since the start of the Associated Press poll in 1936. Finally his 12-3 record in bowl/playoff games is the best in NCAA annals among coaches who have made at least 15 appearance.

For many a Notre Dame football faithful, if he had one chance to look back on the past 20 years and ask “what if,” it’s this: What if Meyer would have accepted the Notre Dame head coaching post in December 2004, after the firing of Tyrone Willingham?

Meyer, an Irish assistant from 1996-2000, had just led Utah to a 12-0 ledger, a major bowl win and top-five finish — just like Leahy had guided Boston College to an 11-0 mark, a Sugar Bowl upset of Tennessee and top-five placement in his second year.

Notre Dame officials immediately flew to Salt Lake City to finalize the deal … only to see Florida had beat it to the punch. The Gators had fired head coach Ron Zook in October to get a head start on the Meyer sweepstakes, and suddenly Notre Dame’s fantasy coach had left egg all over the collective face of the Fighting Irish administration.

The overwhelming opinion was Notre Dame was only living on yesterdays, while Florida was the hip, warm-weather school where success would be easier to attain.

Five years after the Meyer fiasco, the Irish hired another coach in Kelly who had just gone 12-0 (at Cincinnati) and also was named the National Coach of The Year.

Since then, Kelly has restored more consistency into the program (the 2016 collapse the exception) and even made an appearance by his third season in the national title contest.

Over the past year, Meyer’s name has been linked as a possibility for the USC or Texas jobs, and he acknowledged the itch to coach again has remained present.

“To say I don’t think about it — it’s every day,” he told Cowherd. “But it would have to be the perfect, perfect situation. It would have to be something that I was confident that the health issues I could overcome and at least prevent. I don’t know. At this point I think I’m done, but I learned a long time ago…”

Translation: never say never.

For Meyer, it has been a wonderful coaching life without Notre Dame. For the Irish, the chance to continue achieve wonderful achievements still beckon under Kelly’s leadership in the present and future.

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