You might take any one of those guys, NONE of those guys are coming to ND. ND does not sell itself, except for the rare gifted athlete who also has his eyes on the academic prize and not the NFL. The talent Weis brought in? Right, all on offense. ND had to score 35 points a game to offset the 32 it gave up. News Flash, ND was in the national championship picture 2 years ago. Reality check, unless the administration really wants to get down and dirty and find the next small school football genius (which it won't because it thinks like you do that Unlce Urbz is waiting for his turn at ND) then Kelly is your best bet.
I look forward to watching Michigan totally fudge another coaching hire, unless they pull up the Brinks truck to Harbaughs door and drop an $8mill payday on him. (Which they might just do because they are that desperate)
So the general sentiment seems to be that there is too much shit involved with coaching this program to think any upper echelon coach would have anything to do with it? Basically we are stuck with Kelly for better or for worse going forward because nobody else is coming?
I don't know if I fully buy into that even with the understanding of the academic restrictions the administration puts on the program. It's still one of the elite programs in the country, it's still one of the top paid positions in the country, and it's a school that can sell itself on more then just athletics. Any coach is going to be galvanized for eternity if they can bring a national championship back to this historic place. I believe there would certainly be interest in this position by more then most think.