5 reasons Notre Dame should fire Brian Kelly
By John Buhler
Brian Kelly is losing control of his Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team. Here are five reasons it’s time for Notre Dame to hire someone else.
It’s never easy to admit it’s time for a coaching change, but the Notre Dame Fighting Irish looked awful on Saturday against the North Carolina State Wolfpack on Saturday. Frankly, the Fighting Irish have looked varying shades of awful for most of the 2016 NCAA season. They are 2-4 under head coach Brian Kelly through six games.
This was an Irish team that began the year at No. 10 in the AP Top 25 Poll. Yes, this year’s team wasn’t as talented as the group from the year before, but who could have seen the Irish as potentially a 6-6 team this year? It’s almost surreal that Notre Dame will have to claw to be bowl eligible the rest of the way.
Here are five reasons that it is time for the University of Notre Dame to look for a new head coach instead of Kelly:
5. He’s not living up to the lofty expectations set forth at Notre Dame
Whether or not it is merited, Notre Dame has ridiculous standards for its football program. Notre Dame expects to contend for national championships annually. That’s fine to have the bar set that high, but being an independent makes that close to impossible for the Irish in the College Football Playoff era.
To put together a résumé worthy of Playoff inclusion, Notre Dame has to schedule a ridiculously difficult schedule annually. They do it to themselves, but annual meetings with teams like the Stanford Cardinal, the USC Trojans, and the Michigan State Spartans are a necessary part of getting Notre Dame into the College Football Playoff.
Essentially, Notre Dame views itself as a 10 to 11-win program annually. It’s a yesteryear way of thinking for the Fighting Irish. There are only a dozen Power 5 programs that fit that mold in 2016 and Notre Dame is not one of them.
Assuming he wins the rest of his 2016 regular season games to finish 8-4, Kelly will have only averaged 8.42 regular season wins per year. He is clearly coming up at least a win and a half short of meeting Notre Dame’s lofty standards. To the catholic university, that’s unacceptable.