Bill Connelly, formerly of SB Nation and now with ESPN, was releasing historical SP+ ratings on Twitter in recent weeks that are a really fun look at how college football teams have progressed (or not!) over the years. Here are some thoughts about Notre Dame’s graph that caught my attention for this storied program we all follow.

The pre-Rockne years aren’t included which makes sense in the fact that it was a really, really long time ago and a much different game to today. Still, those wins are part of Notre Dame’s history. The Irish are hanging on to the No. 1 overall winning percentage in college football and had the 6th best winning percentage behind Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Michigan, and Minnesota in the years prior to 1918 when Rockne took over. Those pre-World War I years were truly the wild west in so many ways but still Notre Dame piled up a bunch of wins all the same.

It still blows my mind that according to SP+ the 1950 season was the 4th worst campaign in history at Notre Dame. Perhaps the greatest coach of all-time, defending National Champions with a Heisman-winning season, pre-season No. 1 team in the country in what many thought was the best dynasty in football at the time, and Notre Dame rolls out an absolute stink bomb of a season. It’d be like watching Clemson go 4-8 this fall.

The late 1950’s/early 1960’s after Frank Leahy were a dark period as many of our elder statesmen would remember not too fondly. Many would say the 1956 season is the absolute worst in school history given the talent on hand, while losing 8 games with the Heisman Trophy winner really begs the question what the heck happened. Like I said, it was a dark period full of terrors.

Still, Charlie Weis’ legacy remains in tact as 2007 is comfortably the lowest point on the graph. Do you think you’ll see another team below that mark for the remainder of your life? Please say no.

Truthfully, the biggest thing that jumped out to me is how consistently inconsistent Notre Dame is through the years–and this reaches back to the Rockne days. Four seasons below 90% for Rock!

That doesn’t seem right but the Irish have made up for it (at least through the early 1990’s) by having enough elite seasons sprinkled in over numerous generations and several different coaches. At least looking through the lens of SP+ I would say Notre Dame is behind at least 10 other programs in modern times in being able to string together even consistently good seasons. Not great, just good. Most think this is obvious I know but the chart really hammers this home.

For goodness sake, the Rockne years are full of peaks and valleys! Same thing for Leahy and Parseghian. Even the greatest Irish coaches never put together absolute machines on the field for several years in a row like we’re seeing with Saban today at Alabama or Pete Carroll in the past at USC. You could make the case the Holtz run from 1988-93 is by far the most consistently great uninterrupted streak in school history, especially given the schedule strength which is unmatched against his Notre Dame peers. Six years isn’t a short period of time by any means but it’s not terribly long, either.

I find myself wondering if Notre Dame will ever win a National Championship again as I’m sure many other Irish fans do, too. However, this SP+ historical rating begs the question whether Notre Dame will ever be consistently great ever again and that might be more sobering to think about.

The weird thing is that if you can ignore that 2007 drop (don’t have to twist my arm!) the graph really illustrates how the 1964 to present time frame has seen a much more stable floor at Notre Dame than the prior years. On the other hand, you also look at the best seasons since 1996 and those campaigns are hovering around where the weaker seasons fell for the best coaches in school history. That’s not a perfect comparison but it’s pretty close.

OSU & OU Consistency in Modern Times (Pretty Crazy)

Perhaps Brian Kelly is the perfect embodiment of that fate? The program seems very stable but (and I know this does sound a bit crazy coming off a playoff appearance) also not really threatening the elite upper reaches of the historical graph.

Pushing one season up to the 97th or 98th percentile seems difficult but not impossible. That’s been on our minds quite a lot since losing to Clemson last winter. A run like Bobby Bowden’s (152-19-1, 2 National Championships, 10 major bowl wins from 1987-2000) I can say definitively will never happen at Notre Dame. A run like modern Ohio State–where they’ve spent this entire century save one “transition” year in the high 80’s percentile with numerous spikes into the high 90’s and their own pair of titles–also doesn’t seem realistic. Ohio State’s run has been three times as long as Holtz’ consistency.

This is another “Where are We?” thought exercise with Brian Kelly at the helm. It will be interesting to see if he can string together several more seasons in the low 90’s rating and what that could mean for the Fighting Irish. That type of consistency–while possibly derided by the “only the highest expectations matters” crowd–is something that really hasn’t existed in program history. Is there a corner that can be turned, even if by another coach down the road, or are we seeing the peak of what is Notre Dame football heading into the third decade of this century?