Hobbs
Thanks for your comment and insight. In retrospect you are spot on with the emotional baggage I have with Tulsa and that week in particular…a true week of hell with a freshman son on campus going to Declan’s service and the Saturday debacle football-wise.

BK blew in to ND with an attitude that seemed very abbrasive to incoming parents and students at orientation weekend. I was there when BK seemed to send the message out that the ND community was not making the place loud enough or even close. His comments were not very positive after invoking the “lets hear it again and louder” WE ARE ND. It seemed he was not satisfied and stated it.

Back then I thought…ok awkward but maybe relevant to a much broader audience than just us “newbie” parents and students at orientation weekend end…the last memories we would have after leaving sons and daughters there for the first time. AD Jack was even kind of lost for words at the end.

Lets move forward. I can see your point now about how BK has to be the leader, and in some other posts, the CEO. CEOs have got to move things in the best interest of the entity and not worry about the minor fall-outs. BK has left us all thinking about the seemingly minor fall-outs of year 1 and 2.

Year 3 has some very good results so far and I must admit at the core is a coach who has willed his way onto a team very lacking in the fundamentals of what a good team needs to be. Accountability, learning the system, execution every play, confidence in the coaches and knowing how to win whatever the adversity.

Again thanks for the insight…it has probably moved me more to the acceptance of BK as the first legitimate coach-leader at ND in the past 20 years. Although gun-shy I hope this is the first stage of a return to glory with ND football, We all need it desperately.

I think that the posters who were in love with Saban, Stoops and Meyer were taking the lazy approach to thinking about the next coach. A rising star who teaches fundamentals and attitude is what any program needs. It looks like Notre Dame has finally found the right man.

SEE, please keep up the good work.

Paddy

While I respect your opinion I can not in all honesty say…a not well thought out reply to a well written post would not include the priority to win the bowl game we are in this year. Lets forget the points of the last two years and ND’s losses I brought up. Does anyone think the priority of a 3rd year coach with a winning record should not be focused on winning a bowl game for the program at year end ? This was the most important part of what I had hoped my post would be. Sorry if I missed giving the message….but a bowl win in my opinion is the biggest step this progam can take on the way back.

Mis dos pesos!

A lesson Kelly seemed to learn this off-season when the looked at backward plays. I think he was too focused on getting the offense to execute at the expense of games and turnovers.

ND is 20-5 since that Tulsa loss in 2010. This is not some one year wonder. This is a program being built.

I respect your opinion.

I just held a different view, and those posts still exist, that many will likely disagree with.

I completely understand the frustration over the Tulsa loss. As your post shows passions about the game still run high. I’m not going to tell you how to think. I will simply tell you my view.

I take the long term view when coaches are hired. To some that makes me an “enabler” or an apologist. I like to think that I’m keeping the “big picture” in focus. As a rule I don’t get caught up in the game by game “snapshots” in results 1 & 2 of a rebuild. The nature of the process itself is one of tearing down and building anew. During that time I expect bumps in the road.

As I like to point out arguably the ranking coach of the day Nick Saban lost to Louisiana–Monroe @Tuscaloosa in year 1 at Alabama. Compared to that Tulsa was, shall we say, a small-timey, loss.

These things happen to even the best of coaches during the transitional phase of a program rebuild, so while immensely disappointing I don’t give up on a coach when those instances occur.

What is important, and what is much harder to discern is the work that is going on below the water line in those early years. Those improvements often don’t leap off the screen but they are there and they can be spotted if you look closely.

For example I was a big Jim Harbaugh fan while he was at Stanford. In fact in 2007 I stated in Rock’s House that if I were ND’s AD and I had to replace Weis Harbaugh & Kelly would be the two coaches atop my list (and yes, I got seriously beatdown. But I was confident in the correctness of my view ). I watched Harbaugh locally at USD and in his early years at the ‘Farm. In those early years he had some really bad losses. Sure they beat USC but they also got trucked by a bad Bill Doba led Washington State team they also lost to Weis’ 3-9 unit. If you got caught up in the day to day travails of that process you probably would have given up on Harbaugh too. But behind those losses you could see that Harbaugh was changing Stanford. It wasn’t apparent to most at first but Stanford was slowly turning into the image of Harbaugh.

All that foundational work didn’t really show itself until year 3 at Stanford, when Harbaugh had his first winning season (8-5). It wasn’t until the following year that Stanford broke through and finished 12-1. It was at that point where people realized that Harbaugh was really a great coach. Nah, he had always been a great coach, its just that the “process” wasn’t seen by everyone.

To a large extent Kelly has had to go through the same process at ND. He had to change the culture, change the foundation, change the attitudes, and change the fundamental way that ND had gone about their business during 15 years of rot. It wasn’t going to happen overnight, and the results weren’t going to be immediately apparent, but if you looked closely even last year, despite some really bad losses, you could see that this program was in the latter transformational phases.

One more important point – On “Get Use To It”. Few will agree with what I’ll say but I’ve always tried to be honest.

I loved that comment and for me it was a clear sign that Swarbrick got it right. I’ll tell you why. That quote showed me that Kelly was strong enough to deal with the external noise at ND. The noise led to Bob Davie reading ND Nation and reacting to posts. You can’t lead like that. To lead you must have a bedrock vision and be willing to walk through whatever fires needed in order to attain your goal. That’s leadership. To me “get use to it” was Brian Kelly saying ‘I know what I’m doing and I’m not going to change my methods’. I think its that lack of leadership is what ND had been missing for 12 years and that’s why the program went to drift. Again, few will likely share my view and that’s fine we don’t all have to agree, but personally I would have turned on Kelly in an instant if he had shown weakness in that moment. That would have shown me that he wasn’t strong enough to lead at ND.

So overall, I get what your saying but just keep in mind that this is all a process and we often have to give the process time to evolve before we issue judgement.

For the record – Kelly hasn’t finished his build yet, as we’re still weak in several areas. But I think that people are now finally seeing his vision and he’ll now be given enough latitude to finish out the process…………….with a Jumbotron & Firld Turf! – I’M KIDDING 🙂

If you look at what was called following Oklahoma’s tying touchdown, you have to call that poise. Lesser teams would get skittish and lose it. That team took a deep breath, calmed down, and won the game. I was surprised. I was in a cab when Oklahoma scored and in the time it took to get out of the cab and into the bar, Golson had hit brown for the 50-yard play. A team that is not ready to win, that lacks poise doesn’t do that.