re: What will it take for Brian Kelly to be canned after this upcoming season

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Abu, who is a smart dude that posts here, has also said the alums/base are restless.

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A certain faction, for sure. There are probably some parallels to Rodriguez and UM in that there are certain elements within the fanbase that are fanatical about the guy both pro and con, and the con element sees every single move the guy makes as "a tarnish against Michigan/Notre Dame's legacy" or something, and the the pro element is a bunch of dorks (wasn't Cook a RR diehard until the very end? Or am I mis-remembering?) who see everything the guy does in the best light possible and make every excuse for him.

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He also makes a good case that BK hasn't really been better than the predecessors and doesn't develop QBs.

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He's marginally better than Weis and Willingham and Davie, but not materially so. He will never win a national title in FBS, and that would be the case no matter what program employed him. He will probably never win a major bowl game - again, at any powerhouse FBS program - unless he had a favorable match up and some breaks go his way throughout the season.

He has actually recruited reasonably well - recruiting rankings and NFL draft and league production certainly show that to be the case - but, honestly, every post-Holtz ND coach besides Willingham has consistently recruited in the top 10/15 pretty much every year. Remember that 2011 Notre Dame team that choked away the game in Ann Arbor in the last seconds? That team was absolutely stacked with NFL players - would have probably been a national title contender under a title-caliber coach. Instead, we choked away a game against an under-manned (no offense - reverse situation was true in 2004) UM team and ended up 8 - 5 that year.

Talent is not and has never really been the problem (probably not too different from UM). Only maybe at the very, very high end - playing against some of the Carroll-era SC teams or Alabama recently or that 06 LSU team we played - was straight talent deficit a glaring issue.

Our quarterbacks have had a normal distribution-like curve under Kelly. They get better in the first year or year and a half and then tank. It's been a pretty consistent pattern under him, and it's because he is an a-hole without an ounce of leadership ability and they start to tune him out after a while.

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I've always liked BK, but he probably needs to be away from the spotlight and back at a place like Cincy or something like the Ville.

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He got exposed at this level. You have to be a complete leader and executive at a program like UM or ND to be a formidable head coach. He has a lot of flaws that have been put front and center - as a football mind, as a program executive, and as a person - that have eroded this program. They are all pretty remarkably consistent year to year - turnovers, lack of a truly reliable running attack, unfocused, undeveloped safeties, misses in recruiting, on and on. I think he'd be better suited to be an offensive coordinator or something. He could maybe handle a Purdue or an Oregon State. Tom Jurich at Louisville would eat him alive; Kelly needs an AD he can bully around.

ETA: One thing I forget to add was that we're about to open a half-billion dollar stadium renovation, adjusted our ticket pricing model after more than a half-century of being a standard old-school model, and are putting in luxury boxes. It is now the most expensive ticket in college football, and there are a lot of alumni who will not put up with a two bit shuckster who hasn't won diddly shite and got the program on probation much longer.