Notre Dame, Brian Kelly Attempt To Dig Out From Extremely Deep Hole

Notre Dame’s 2-5 start in head coach Brian Kelly’s seventh season has naturally prompted angst about whether he has maxed out with the Fighting Irish.

The anti-Kelly crowd believes seven years is enough to cast the die of who you are. With his current 57-28 record (.671 winning percentage), Kelly has proven himself to be an 8-4-aggregate coach who is good enough to not get fired but not good enough to take Notre Dame to the Promised Land. For the long-term health of the football team, and Kelly individually, the two need to part ways and start anew: the Fighting Irish with a different voice and leader, and Kelly at a different setting.

This might well be accurate, especially if the current free fall by the Irish continues in the final five regular season games following this week’s bye.

Meanwhile, the pro-Kelly crowd (both of them, one might intone at this point with sarcasm) maintains that he is still the best option for Notre Dame moving forward. There are two coaches in the 128-team FBS that have fashioned 12-0 regular season records — an incredibly difficult achievement — at two different schools. One is Urban Meyer (Utah and Ohio State), and the other is Kelly (Cincinnati in 2009 and Notre Dame in 2012). Not bad company to be in.

Keep in mind that the Irish have been a so-so football operation that for 18 straight years from 1994-2011 was never in the national title conversation entering Thanksgiving weekend. Under Kelly, it has been twice in the past five years.

Even Lou Holtz was in it only once in his final six years from 1991-96 (1993). Even Ara Parseghian was in it once in the six years from 1967-72, when his record against ranked teams was 5-8-2.

A case can be made that Kelly should not be kept after the 2016 season if the Irish finish under .500. Coaches at top historical powers cannot survive such a meltdown.

Or can they?

My Blueandgold.com colleague Bryan Driskell will point to examples of College Football Hall of Fame coaches who have been able to bounce back when it was thought they had already peaked. I will focus more on the 40 years from 1960-2000, while Bryan will look at some other coaches since the turn of the century.

In no way does this intimate that Kelly is the equal of such luminaries in college football annals. Rather it’s just to point out that even the greatest in the business will endure some rough stretches before bouncing back. Here were five such examples among many others:

Ohio State’s Woody Hayes (1951-78)

In his ninth season (1959), Hayes finished 3-5-1 before two years later returning to the No. 2 spot. Then in his 16th year (1966) he finished 4-5, prompting a plane at one game over The Horseshoe to carry a message that Hayes needed to be fired.

Two years later, the Buckeyes won the national title.

Alabama’s Bear Bryant (1958-82)

While going 0-7-1 in bowls from 1967-74, the joke was that Bryant ate his cereal on a plate because “he can’t handle bowls.” In 1969 and 1970 he combined for a 5-8 record in the SEC while going 6-5 and 6-5-1 overall before overhauling his operation, including installing the Wishbone. A year later, he would play for the national title (losing 38-6 to Nebraska).

USC’s John McKay (1960-75)

One of the elite coaches in the 1960s began 1970-71 with a 6-6-1 record in the Pac 8. After a 6-4-1 finish in 1970, he started 2-4 in 1971 while admittedly battling team dissension.

A year later, the Trojans won the national title.

Texas’ Darrell Royal (1957-76)

After winning the national title in 1963, Royal's Longhorns went through 6-4, 7-4, 7-4 marks in 1965-67 while going 12-9 in the SWC, and then opened 0-1-1 in 1968 after completely overhauling the operation with the new Wishbone introduced by assistant Emory Bellard.

The Longhorns won the national title a year later.

Georgia’s Vince Dooley (1964-88)

In his sixth and seventh seasons with the Bulldogs (1969-70), Dooley saw his teams finish with a collective mark under .500 in the SEC while going 5-5-1 and 5-5 overall. One year later he was 11-1.

He hit his nadir in 1977 with a 5-6 mark in year 14, and wasn’t much better in 1979 at 6-5. One year later, with the arrival of Herschel Walker, he was 12-0 and a national champion.

We absolutely don’t foresee Kelly to last 15-25 years like the above premier names (among many others not mentioned), and we’re not projecting national titles either. But he has a similar history of bouncing back with national title contention after a very disappointing season or two, just like in 2012 and 2015.

Both the pro- and anti-Kelly factions have legitimate arguments on either holding on to someone who has taken Notre Dame to the brink of a title or Playoff after a couple of mediocre decades, or making a change.

Stay tuned for Bryan Driskell's feature later today.

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