I'd go even so far as saying that MNC and BCS bowls shouldn't be a concern
At least for next season and maybe 2013 too.
What I mean is, we likely incredibly underestimate the power of stringing together 8-5, 9-4, or even 10-3 seasons over a long period of time (5+ years).
On the other hand, we are talented enough at most positions to be a real power, but we know the tools (QB play, killer instinct, etc.) just aren’t there right now.
Therefore, it seems pretty obvious that Notre Dame desperately craves stability and consistency. Even the mouth foaming crazies have a hard time imagining Notre Dame having sub.500 seasons under Kelly—-and that is very important.
Certainly some will say “hurr duurrr look how far ND has fallen, we’re rewarding mediocrity.”
But look at the past 15 years….there’s EIGHT seasons either at, below, or one game over .500!!!
Notre Dame’s biggest problem pre-Kelly is that it couldn’t stay consistently good, not that it couldn’t have one-off 10-win seasons.
So as much as it might suck that with this talent Kelly might not go to a BCS bowl for a few years, being consistently good (winning 8 or 9 games a season) could do wonders for the program. I know it sounds weird, but I believe that.
I’ve been pretty vocal that Kelly should get a long time to rebuild this program—-like 7 or 8 years—-with the caveat that there’s no major scandals or a stink bomb season (or two). If you were to simulate 15 years of Irish seasons, Kelly will likely have a ton of good seasons and hopefully a truly special season or two.
That’s where I think expectations need to be reset.
We as ND fans are in no position to be ripping our hair out by back-to-back 8-5 seasons, and that’s something a lot of people (not many around here) can’t understand.
How can people be so upset when this program was 3-7, 7-6, 6-6 before Kelly arrived, with a bunch of crappy seasons in the decade prior as well? You can’t simultaneously bitch about how bad ND and the BOT have been with football, and then act like we just won a national title two years ago and Kelly is running the program off a cliff.
To reiterate, we need to get to the level where we’re consistently good, and then build off of that. No coach is ever going to come in here and consistently win 10 or 11 games every single year, nor right from the get-go.
So when you see a lot of the hair puller outters saying, “Kelly’s winning percentage is so and so and therefore history proves he will fail” they don’t get it anymore. They still think it’s 1964 and a great coach can come in and just turn this around in a matter of months.
What they should be focusing on is that no ND coach in the modern era has ever been able to string together consistently good seasons without looking awful every two years. But they don’t want to hear that.
