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COLUMN: Notre Dame Still In Search Of The ‘Big One’

Defining exactly what a “big game” is for a college football coach or program is open to interpretation based on circumstances, opponent and season expectations, among other factors.

That said, Notre Dame’s matchup with top-ranked Clemson checks almost every “big game” box for 11th-year Irish head coach Brian Kelly, other than facing an opponent without its best player after Tigers starting quarterback Trevor Lawrence was put in isolation with coronavirus infection.

This will mark the ninth time during Kelly’s tenure at Notre Dame that he pits a top-10 Irish team against a top-10 opponent, and it’s the first time he has ever coached against a No. 1 squad (Alabama was ranked No. 2 and Notre Dame No. 1 in the 2012 national championship game).

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Notre Dame and Brian Kelly have a prime chance for a big win against Clemson.
Notre Dame and Brian Kelly have a prime chance for a big win against Clemson. (Bill Panzica)

Surprisingly, this is only the second top-10 matchup at Notre Dame Stadium and the first game for the Irish against a top-ranked team since 2005 when No. 1 USC beat No. 9 Notre Dame 34-31 in the infamous "Bush Push" game.

With this as a backdrop, Clemson provides Kelly arguably the best chance of his career to exorcise any “big game” demons.

Kelly is an uninspiring 20‑20 against top-25 teams while coaching the Irish, he’s 3-8 versus top-10 foes and 0-5 against top-five opponents, and the showdown with Clemson comes against a team that hasn’t lost a regular-season game in 39 tries and more than two years.

For comparison’s sake — perhaps unfairly — former Irish head coach Lou Holtz remarkably played 53 ranked opponents in his 11 seasons at Notre Dame (1986-96), and finished 31-20-2 in those, including a 12-8 mark against top-five foes, brashly dismissing his success secrets with, “It’s not rocket science.”

Kelly is not alone among former Notre Dame coaches who struggled to beat the elite.

Shockingly, since 1999 — Bob Davie’s third season as Irish head coach — the lone win for Notre Dame in 20 tries against a top-five opponent came under Charlie Weis in 2005 at No. 3 Michigan.

Equally surprising is that in 135 games as Notre Dame’s head coach, Kelly has faced only five top-five teams — No. 4 Stanford in 2011, No. 2 Alabama in 2012, No. 2 Florida State in 2014, No. 2 Clemson in 2018 and No. 3 Georgia in 2019 — and lost all five by an average score of 31-15.

“That’s how you’re measured as a program, when you’re talking about top-five teams,” Kelly said in 2014, just prior to the heartbreaking 31‑27 loss to Florida State, Notre Dame’s best performance against a top-five team in 13 years — though the gritty effort by Kelly’s Irish in a 23-17 loss at Georgia last season deserves a mention.

Additionally, Kelly is only 2-6 in the eight games he’s coached a top-10 Fighting Irish team against a top-10 opponent, losing those six by an average of 19 points.

Legendary Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden said about three decades ago that, “A big game is never one you win. It’s always one you lose. If you won the dang thing, well, it wasn’t big enough.”

Kelly has yet to enter the pressure cooker that Bowden and Holtz shared. But this weekend provides the Irish coach, and a really good football team, the perfect opportunity to do so.

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