Things have gone so poorly in 2016 that troubling comparisons are starting to be made. The ironic (or is it sad?) part during times like these is that as awful as the play on the field is that message boards everywhere duplicate that atmosphere in their communities.
When things get ugly most aren’t really comfortable or satisfied keeping things in perspective or keeping criticism mostly to the results we see on the field.
Some might think this article is a defense of Kelly in comparison to his predecessor Charlie Weis. That’s not my point and certainly not my intent. In some ways, that comparison will always be there and be useful to some degree. I tend to think it’s doesn’t mean a ton (as in point number one on why you should keep your job) but it still has some meaning.
However, in recent days I’ve seen a proliferation of talk about “Is Kelly really that different than Weis?”
No, don’t.
Let’s not walk down that road. This gray-washing (I think I just made this term up) of two coaching eras is not going to happen. The history is the history and it can’t be altered. Let’s take a look back at the past, shall we?
Top F/+ Notre Dame Wins (2005-2009)
| TEAM | YEAR | F/+ RANK |
|---|---|---|
| Michigan | 2005 | 6 |
| Georgia Tech | 2006 | 22 |
| Tennessee | 2005 | 27 |
| UCLA | 2007 | 30 |
| Michigan State | 2009 | 31 |
Luckily for us the Football Outsiders F/+ rankings go back to 2005 during Charlie Weis’ first season. Certainly, this ranking system has some flaws but it’s still instructive to look back at the past.
What do you remember most about the Weis era? For me it’s always been the lack of quality wins. Don’t you remember? We literally never proved anything on the national stage. Take a look at the wins above.
Oh man, is that a lot of underachieving talented teams. Obviously, this is where F/+ kind of loses some people because, believe it or not, the top Weis wins came against teams that finished 33-30. The last three teams featured above finished under .500 on the season!
What’s also hilarious in retrospective is that if you were to say the 2005 UM game (they were ranked No. 3 at game time but suffering through the Lloyd Carr death rattle) was the biggest win then Charlie Weis literally peaked at Notre Dame in his second game.
I bet you didn’t expect to see anything from 2007 on this list, did you? Oh, but UCLA was really talented in 2007 and came into the season ranked highly with a bunch of returning starters. However, they suffered some major injuries and couldn’t overcome them. Notre Dame totaled 140 yards and still won, thanks to an incredible 9 turnovers from a hapless UCLA offense starting its 3rd-string quarterback.
Charlie Weis did beat only 1 team that finished ranked in the AP Poll by the end of the year. That was 2006 Penn State who finished 38th nationally in F/+ that season.
Top F/+ Notre Dame Wins (2010 to Present)
| TEAM | YEAR | F/+ RANK |
|---|---|---|
| Michigan State | 2013 | 6 |
| Stanford | 2012 | 8 |
| Oklahoma | 2012 | 9 |
| USC | 2013 | 11 |
| Arizona State | 2013 | 13 |
| Michigan State | 2011 | 14 |
| USC | 2015 | 17 |
| Stanford | 2014 | 18 |
| BYU | 2012 | 18 |
| Pittsburgh | 2010 | 19 |
| Michigan State | 2012 | 20 |
| Navy | 2015 | 21 |
| LSU | 2014 | 22 |
| Miami | 2010 | 24 |
| USC | 2010 | 25 |
| Michigan | 2012 | 25 |
| USC | 2012 | 26 |
| BYU | 2013 | 30 |
| Utah | 2010 | 32 |
No you see how laughingly different things have been under Kelly, yes? The top three teams on that list were at least co-champions of their conferences and went 35-6 overall.
The Weis chart above is what you’d expect for a coach, like his predecessor, that quickly found magic in a bottle and then watched things float away like balloons during a Clemson home game. Kelly’s list looks like a coach who was really, really close to breaking through to something special.
This isn’t a small sample size, either. From mid-November 2010 through the end of 2015 Notre Dame went 51-17 (.750%) over a 5+ year period. Do the math, 18 out of the 19 games listed above came in that time frame for Brian Kelly–almost 4 good wins per year. I’ve got no time for anyone who wants to pretend this didn’t happen.
Kelly’s biggest problem is too many recent losses and no wins on this list over his last 13 games. The optimist would say there’s been losses of 2, 16, 3, 8, 3, 7, and 7 but you simply cannot have this many losses in that short period of a time in combination with no good wins. Which is why Kelly is where he is.
Again, if you think this is an ode to why Kelly deserves to stick around you’re wrong. However, when it comes down to reasons why Notre Dame would be able to hire a really good new coach in the future that list of wins in the table above might just be at the top of the list.
@Shut up, you blind Kelly-lover!!@
How dare you be rational and use comparative stats!
@Brian Kelly has never done anything good!@
@We’ve always been at war with Eastasia!@
Good stuff Eric. Pretty striking difference in records.
Re your last sentence, it could also have the opposite effect–“they fired the guy that did THAT?”
On the other hand I don’t think prospective hires will consider that as seriously as they consider the difficulties in recruiting and retaining talent at ND sufficiently to meet fan expectations.
Kiwi, just want to remind you, we’re the number eight recruiter in the nation over the last five years. Recruiting is less of a problem.
Oh no…here we go again…
/closes page in a hurry
Alright man… I didn’t want to have to do this, but here we go. Notre Dame’s 247 Composite class rankings by recruiting cycle year:
That averages out to 12th. I’m not sure where that average of 8th is coming from; maybe one service is consistently much more favorable to us, but I always go by the Composite as it does a decent job of balancing out the inherent biases of the services.
As I pointed out in the other thread, the difference between a 12th-ranked class and an 8th-ranked class is basically one additional five-star recruit. So to get from where we to where you think we are, we would’ve had to get one more five-star per year over the last five years. For poops and giggles, let’s say those five were Keith Marshall, Eddie Vanderdoes (with a healthy grandma), Lorenzo Carter, Minkah Fitzpatrick, and Caleb Kelly. Notre Dame was in it to varying degrees with all five of those guys. There’s a small chance those guys could’ve impacted the product on the field, no?
It is extremely difficult for post-1992 Notre Dame, under any coach, to recruit elite defensive players. Vinny Cerrato got more recruiting leeway than probably anyone since Leahy, and once the administration felt the pendulum had swung too far and pushed him out things got a lot harder. Why should Noah Spence, or Myles Garrett, or Leonard Williams, or Su’a Cravens, come to Notre Dame when each of them has a few dozen schools telling them how easy their life will be as they make their inexorable march to the NFL? No, come here, where we expect you to go to class and behave, and if you don’t you’ll be kept off the field.
Do we have enough talent to be 7-0 right now? Abso-freaking-lutely. Do we have enough talent to be a perennial top 15 team? Yes. Do we have institutional restrictions that guarantee we’ll never be on a level playing field with Alabama and Ohio State, making it that much harder to build a game plan to beat them? You better believe it. Probably 80%-90% of the current head coaches in college football would want absolutely nothing to do with us, and 100% of the established elite guys.
“Probably 80%-90% of the current head coaches in college football would want absolutely nothing to do with us, and 100% of the established elite guys.”
Um…what? I expect nearly every group of 5 HC, with a few exceptions (mostly the couple hot coaches who are looking at even better opportunities), would jump at the chance to coach ND. Way more money, better facilities, better recruits, and a national profile. These guys are, pretty much to a man, competitive and confident, and would be more than willing to take the ND job. I expect many Power 5 coaches feel the same.
Now, the particulars of the ND situation will make it harder to hire the hottest of hot coaches, since they’ll have even better offers. And established ELITE coaches aren’t likely to jump to ND, and a few other coaches are comfortable where they are. But I expect at least half of D1 head coaches would happily take an ND offer.
The percentage is probably exaggerated, but yeah, I think there are a whole bunch of guys who wouldn’t bother. They’re competitive and confident, but they also don’t see the need to saddle themselves with a handicap that literally no other team in FBS has (not even Stanford). And given what happened to the three coaches before Kelly, they have to be aware that cratering at Notre Dame could set their career back years. AND they’d be following a guy who just got canned four years after being in the national title game and one year after a NY6 appearance.
Guys notice that stuff. And I stand by the thought that 100% of the established elite guys would want nothing to do with us. They can write their own check anywhere – in the modern era, no coach needs Notre Dame. We’re in a seller’s job market.
Eh, I’m not so sure about that. The last one was an NFL offensive coordinator the very next season and the one before that was hired as head coach of another P5 school two weeks after he was fired. Exactly where Notre Dame found them. Kelly would almost certainly find a P5 job as well. I don’t think getting fired from Notre Dame sets anyone’s career back at all.
I disagree on Weis and Willingham, and I would add in that Davie’s coaching career was pretty much wrecked by his time at ND too. But we’re not going to get anywhere discussing that.
What I will say is this… Failing at a marquee stop absolutely sets you back. Failing at ND is more likely due to the unique nature of the program, and the spotlight that will be pointed at your failure is much brighter and much harsher. If a hot coach like, say, Tom Herman has a choice between USC and ND, he’d have no real reason to pick ND. Just ask Urban Meyer.
Then again, if USC wouldn’t look too stable if it had just fired a head coach after one year, ensuring they would have their fifth HC since 2013.
Brendan was adddressing the attractiveness of the job, not whether the coaching role had been stable. In a choice between ND and USC it’s a no brainer for a successful, career oriented HC. Unlimited recruiting, lax academic and disciplinary standards, great weather, sexy location, much higher odds of succcess. Other than the last two items, I’m sure that was the calculation Urban made.
Failing at a marquee stop sets you back, yes, but I don’t think Davweisingham were wrecked any more by failing at ND than they would have had they failed at, say, Washington (which they would have, and one of them did).
Your argument seems to be that failing at ND hurts you rather than the idea that those 3 all failed because they weren’t all that great, a possibility bolstered by how pathetic each one of them were at their subsequent stops. Davie has been meh at New Mexico, and that makes him by far the most successful of the 3 since leaving.
You’re saying Weis went to an OC job in the NFL? Thought he went to Akron. Willingham took a step down, going to UW and bombed. Davie is where, New Mexico?
Kelly can get a P5 job if he wants it, I suspect, but I’d be amazed if he got a marquee program unless it was felt he got a raw deal ( which definitely helped Willingham, as did his being Black), or is respected in the CFB community for elevating ND from the depths. If I were he, I’d take a shot at TV commentating, a la Mack Brown. Lots of money, near zero pressure, and he’s an articulate guy who would do well. After ND it would be a cakewalk, as Brown is finding.
Faust went to Akron. How could you mix those two coaches up 25 years apart LOL?
I would suspect the most of “failed” head coaches at the top end Power 5 jobs don’t have many career options for the remainder of their careers. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any examples but there have to be some out there.
The thing with Notre Dame is we have a long history of burning coaches out. Three out of the last 4 who won titles straight up quit football when they were young enough to keep coaching. The fourth retired for a while and then had a couple good seasons in 6 total at South Carolina.
The other coaches have gone on to coach at lesser schools and not do very well.
Yeah, no kidding, how could I. Another senior moment for sure. Kansas, how could I mix up Kansas and Akron? After all, I got married once in Akron.
Rob Ianello was hired as the head coach of Akron after Weis was fired from Notre Dame, and I believe a few other assistants joined his staff. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of?
i think Orlok might mean our average of 12th per year is the 8th best among all FBS teams. i don’t know if that is true, but the consistency of top 15 classes with one really good year and one off year does make it plausible that only 7 teams were consistently better over that time frame.
dannan14: Would you please elaborate on this sentence?
The only way I can see that being true is if 4 of the teams with a better average than ours are FCS teams. If 11 FBS teams have a better recruiting average than we do, how are 4 of those teams NOT better at recruiting than us over that same time frame?
See below. Notice how tOSU and FSU average 4.2 and 4.6 best class respectively. If every year totally different teams were in the top 10, then averaging 12.4 could pretty easily make you the 8th best recruiting team.
I also just realized I left out ND. At an average of 12.4 they would be ranked 11th, between Texas A&M and Clemson. So when counting, add 1 to everyone starting at Clemson.
juicebox’s post below does illustrate what i was trying to say. Some schools are not achieving year by year results as consistently as ND is. Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and meatchicken jump out with their high/low being far from their average. With the info juice provided it turns out that ND is 11th, not 8th, but that is still a bit better than the average ranking of 12.44
Here are the top 20 recruiting teams of the past 5 years. Although Brendan R’s logic isn’t quite right (averaging 12th best class, doesn’t make you 12th best recruiting team), it works out almost perfectly for ND (#11). FSU and tOSU show why the logic is flawed.
Here is the Avg Class Rank/Highest Rank/Lowest Rank from the 2012-2016 classes.
Bama 1/1/1
tOSU 4.2/2/7
FSU 4.6/2/11
LSU 6.2/2/11
UGA 8.2/5/12
USC 8.8/2/13
Auburn 8.8/6/11
Florida 9.8/3/21
Texas 10.4/2/17
aTm 11.8/5/18
Clemson 13.4/9/17
Tennessee 13.8/4/24
UCLA 13.8/7/18
Michigan 14.6/4/37
OU 15/12/19
Miami 16.6/10/26
Oregon 19.4/13/28
South Carolina 19.8/17/24
Stanford 22.2/7/51
Thank you. This is about how it works out. Bill Connelly and Dave Bartoo explain the same thing in their posts.
Interesting that in our top rated class, two of the top three recruits were failures and were out of the program before finishing.
This is why I think class rankings would be much more interesting and attractive AFTER the class completes eligibility rather than before they play a single down in CFB. It would make for a fascinating comparison and I doubt seriously our post play ranking would be as high as our pre play rankings given defections, suspensions and dismissals.
i also think Brendan is dead on when he notes the impact of an extra five star in each class. These are the most likely to be difference makers and even one or two can change everything. Whoever got Reggie Bush was going to be in the NC hunt, just as with Vince Evans, Cam Newton, Watson etc. We rarely get someone that impactful.
Weis to Akron?
Vince Evans the difference maker??
@Go home, kiwifan, you’re drunk.@
You may be right CSN. Vince Young, Vince Evans, missed it by a mile, but I bet you knew who I meant 😀
Brendan,
@”I didn’t want to do this,”@ but what you’re forgetting is that consistently being in the top 15, while other programs move in and out of the top 15, means that our five year AVERAGE is higher. Said differently – yes, we’re about 13th every year. But that’s better over five years than varying from 5 to 50 (which I think stanford did at some point).
Here’s Bill Connelly. What does he think about our recruiting rankings?
http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2016/2/4/10914710/college-football-recruiting-improvement-tcu-baylor
Look at column 5. @I’ll accept your apology by posting on this site@. But seriously man, don’t condescend.
Now that said, I agree with every other part of your post, especially the elite defensive player part (nice article, by the way – thank you). But the 7-0 part – which I also agree with – is what frustrates me when I hear people complaining about talent. Lack of talent explains losses to OSU or Alabama. It does not explain this season.
Butler felony charges dropped. Instead he’s reached a deal to have a suspended misdemeanor charge which will be dismissed if he completes a pretrial program over the next year. It’s good that what was clearly a ridiculous attempt to ruin a kid’s life was taken over by someone with some sense.
As a condition of the plea he had to write a letter of apology to the arresting officer, which strikes me as a giant pile of North Korean political-arrest-apology horsepoop. But, given that he was facing two felony charges and nobody came forward with video contradicting the police report, this is about as good an outcome as he could hope for.
I think there’s a pretty decent chance he’ll be back on the field in spring ball.
Mr. Knepper,
sorry.
Devin Butler
That officer was not well-liked long before the incident with Butler.
I read it differently. I read it as Butler admitting to his guilt. He never claimed to not attack the police, he just stated he understood how him trying to seperate combatants could look like he was participating. The plea deal probably has as much to do with that Knepper guy being in all kinds of bad situations recently and the lawyer, like good lawyers do, took advantage of the controversy and got a good deal for his client. I’m glad the young man is getting a good deal, but if he’d attacked me, as a law enforcement officer, I would want much harsher penalties for him. I fully acknowledge that certain cops manage to turn controlled situations into chaos, and I hate it when they come to back me up.
As far as keeping or firing Kelly, I am just torn on which way they should go. Not that my opinion matters at all.
> …if he’d attacked me, as a law enforcement officer, I would want much harsher penalties for him.
I made a similar point in another forum. If the prosecutor really believed all the details of Knepper’s report, that Butler tackled him, ripped his duty belt off (is that even possibly in a scuffle? thought they were supposed to be pretty immune to that), punched and kneed him in the ribs, and tried to get his mace, it seems kind of odd that they’d be willing to plea down to misdemeanor resisting. Seems sort of like a slap in the face to the SBPD. If that’s what happened.
I wouldn’t expect Butler to say “I didn’t do what you said I did” in a letter of apology, even if he doesn’t think he did what they said he did. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. I think the letter is a pretty odd requirement from the prosecutor; to me it reads like a complete CYA move by South Bend when they’re already under fire for the stuff Knepper has done over the past few years. Granted, that’s a pretty cynical view, but it just seems like a minor throw-in that serves very little rehabilitative purpose when they already have him paying $400 in fines and doing 22 hours of community service. The city can now point to the letter if someone else complains about Knepper being too rough, and say, “See? This was a good arrest and a good report.”
I know you’re law enforcement yourself, and you have a very different perspective than the rest of us. I appreciate that, and of course I appreciate your work and the work of all the good cops out there, who make up the vast majority of the guys on the street. I just can’t shake the feeling that this case stinks.
Thanks Brendan. Based on what I’ve seen in the past, I believe this was a solid case. It’s Knepper himself that taints the case. His past poor judgements and questionable actions have tainted every case he is in now. I’m confident he’ll be fired as soon as the city has enough to fire him and not get sued by him or citizens that he has had contact with. I bet this guy never sees the tweets again. I promise you this, a tainted cop struggles hard to find employment in law enforcement. This will probably change a lot of policies in SBPD. Institutional momentum is another matter, but I bet they put all kinds of policies in place to try to prevent that stuff from happening again.
I have no problem with differing opinions guys. I don’t like hearing things like all cops are racist or corrupt, but understand the sentiment.
Good insight, thanks. And I agree with your last line. I read a blog post after the Ferguson shooting by a retired St. Louis cop. She opened by relaying the opinion of another cop she knew; she emphasized that the percentages were arbitrary, but it gets the point across. So, the other guy said that in his experience, 15% of cops were completely upstanding guys who would do the right thing every time no matter how difficult, 15% were in it for the wrong reasons and would abuse their power every chance they got, and the other 70% were decent guys who would be influenced by who was around them.
Cops as a whole certainly aren’t racist. Are there racists who are cops? Sure, just like there are pedophiles who are priests. But not all priests are pedophiles, either. The key is to deal with the bad apples appropriately.
Well said Brendan.
Keep in mind that Butler was in a walking boot for this entire incident.
And had come off crutches the day before. I’ve never had a broken foot or been in a walking boot – closest I came was an air cast for a badly sprained ankle – but it seems like it might be a hindrance to that kind of behavior.
Anyway, Devin is obviously moving on from the situation, and I’ll do the same. The more I think about it, the more confident I am he’ll be back for spring ball and this will all be a distant memory.
My wife has a broken foot and is in a boot. Definitely not very mobile.
Good post. I’ve found myself comparing this season to 2007, since it’s looking like this will be the worst single season since then, with a chance at tying the 3-9 record from that year if we don’t stop the bleeding soon.
But unlike 2007 through this same point, we’ve been competitive in every game this year and have avoided getting blown out. By comparison, at this point in 2007, we’d already lost games by 30, 21, 38, 17, 14, and 13 points. The lone win was by 14 points over UCLA that I’m told happened purely due to good turnover luck. (I have absolutely no recollection of that game, I can only assume I was completely shitfaced by that point in the season. I need another drink after looking those scores up.)
This team is Kelly’s worst. It is not good. Being able to claim “well, we haven’t been blown out” seems like little consolation. But this team is nowhere near as bad as Weis’s worst team, and, despite the poor record, has shown that it can keep every game competitive, unlike the last few Weis teams. The problems are not as fundamental as they were under Weis.
Yeah, this season feels more like 1994 than *error year not found*. Granted, in ’94 the team started out 4-1 with a 2pt loss to meatchicken, however all but one of the regular season losses were by 7 pts or fewer. The ’94 NFL draft was also full of ND players just like the ’16 draft. That was Holtz’s worst team, this is Kelly’s.
Depending where you lived you may not have even seen the UCLA game. It was the last ND game not available nationally (there were a couple of 2010 games televised regionally, but by then ESPN3 existed so you could at least stream them).
I didn’t see it and I lived in Indiana. The Indy station opted for Purdue/Ohio State, which oddly enough was a better game then.
Rec’d for the name.
I’m forming a band for the sole purpose of naming it “Lloyd Carr’s Death Rattle”. Apologies up front that it will be just another indie folk band.
It seems to me like when we talk about how desirable the ND job is we count the same drawbacks two or three times. Here’s how it typically goes:
Strike 1 against ND:
Because of high academic and behavioral standards, Notre Dame has trouble recruiting the best recruits. (However, this helps us with a certain subset of recruits attracted to the academics.)
Strike 2 against ND:
Because of high academic and behavioral standards, it is more difficult to coach at ND. Yes, but that is largely subsumed in the first point.
And you can go on and on and on
Strike 3 against ND:
The administration imposes high academic and behavioral standards.
It all seems circular.
I know there are other considerations, although I don’t think expectations being too high is one of them because practically every school everywhere imagines itself in the playoffs each year.
My bottom line is that unless a coach has an offer from LSU (with what seems like an automatic in-state top ten class each year) or one of another handful of teams, I would think Notre Dame would look very attractive.
It’s a little more nuanced, I think. The first hurdle is getting players in, which is based on the academic work and citizenship the kids have already shown. We are similar to Stanford in this regard, except I think Stanford’s admission requirements are even higher than ours.
The second hurdle is keeping players eligible. They have to take real classes, not be scofflaws, etc. So this factor is, “Are they doing enough now that they’re here?” That’s different than “Have they done enough to show they can graduate if we let them in?” Here is where we differ from Stanford. Once players get in, the requirements for staying eligible at Stanford are lower than ours (though I eagerly await the Stanford Fan’s vociferous objection to this characterization). It also acknowledges that boneheaded stuff that’s not so much illegal as merely foolish (like a football player providing too much academic help to a teammate (which has to be the most Notre Dame reason for discipline ever)) will get a player suspended for the season instead of, say, being made to run the stadium steps a few dozen times. That’s where the point about the administration should be made. A player can violate a policy, which can be strict at Notre Dame, without violating the law, yet be punished like a lawbreaker at another school.
That last may be double counting, but the first 2 are distinct in my opinion.
Yup, academics is a wide ranging issue for any coach at Notre Dame.
I’m surprised (not saying MDIRISH meant this) that a lot of Irish fans think we can “loosen admissions” and level the playing field in recruiting. The claws of academics are so much deeper than that.
I bet you could practically give Notre Dame the same admission standards as Oklahoma and it wouldn’t change the outlook of too many recruits.
It’s the 4 years of school work that’s a huge turn off. And that’s never changing. Even if we widely changed admission standards you still have to sign the top recruits and you still have to deal with the inevitable academic issues that are going to follow you around.
It’s a 24/7 concern that no one else in the country deals with.
I agree with Shirts and Eric, except you left out the disciplinary aspect, Eric. It too never goes away.
It’s often 3.5 years of schoolwork, which is even worse. Prister, O’Malley, and Sampson, on their podcast, were noting that our players are required to take full loads (not “full time” or 12 credits–FULL loads, or 15-18 credits, or 5-6 classes) IN SEASON because ND wants it’s players to graduate in 4 years at most, and 3.5 if at all possible. This is on top of the classes they have to take each summer–meaning they don’t get to go home or get a break, like “normal” students do.
I’ve railed about this before, but the idea of taking 18 credit hours on top of football in season is insane to me–and I’m a grad student who wants to be a prof! Clearly they are doing enough academic work. There’s no reason why ND players shouldn’t be allowed to take 12 credits in the Fall semester (the minimum to be “full time” at ND–though other schools don’t require full time necessarily–see Leinart vs. Ballroom Dancing), 15-18 credits in the Spring, and their summer courses. And there’s nothing of value gained by trying to force them to finish in 3.5 years. Remove the requirement that players have to enroll in graduate programs (the quickie MBA) to play a 5th year and let them pace out their academics reasonably–this was their argument, and it’s the same one I’ve been making for a while now. There is literally NOTHING about doing that which somehow “cheapens” ND’s academics–regular students have every right to take less classes per semester. It’s not a special exception–if anything, football players are currently taking WAY more classes in a shorter amount of time than that expected of the average ND population. The classes don’t need to change at all–no one is advocating that ND athletes should get A’s for C work. But it’s a lot easier to do A work in 4 classes at once compared to 6 classes at once, especially if you’re throwing football commitments on top of that.
wow didn’t realize they have to take 18 credits every semester. I found that tough as an undergrad (and was happy that later on I could take 15) – as someone also who is also in grad school and hoping to become a prof.
I entirely agree that 5 years to do “4 years” worth of school work while playing football is totally reasonable and doesn’t water down the degree at all. No one else is required to graduate in 4 years and it is not uncommon that it takes 5 without playing a sport – especially if one changes their major.
I absolutely have no idea how the football players are able to do that. Hat’s off to them, but no need to put them through it.
15 credits in the Fall with 18 in the Spring is the LEAST that could happen to change it for the better (and even that is probably a little high in terms of credits to graduate in 4 years). The 3.5 years to graduate is just insane.
That’s clearly the high end (15 credits in-season is probably more normal), but yeah. I remember doing 19 credits (with ROTC being the extra 1-credit) a few semesters and it was a killer.
As two future profs, I think you’d agree that you’d much rather have a student–any student–take less courses and do well in them because they could devote more time to learning than to overload and spread themselves too thin, right? I just don’t see the logic of “we’ve got to push them out in UNDER 4.” Graduation rates are important, but I can’t imagine other schools limit their graduation rates to “only those who finish in 4,” right? A degree is a degree is a degree, as long as you get it.
Exactly KG. What’s the point of taking a class unless you learn in it? And you learn in it better when you have the proper time to devote to it.
The degree should certify that you’ve taken a certain set of courses and are competent in those courses, so to speak. Does it make you less competent to do those same courses in 5 years rather than 4? Obviously not.
Notre Dame athletes do not have to take 18 credits in a single semester ever, unless they choose to do so. I worked in the marketing department a couple hours per week and helped the counselors with all sorts of things, including student scheduling issues. Most athletes I saw who were in marketing (not many, but definitely some football players) all took 15 hours.
I can’t believe that Prister, et al. are correct. When I was at ND, the course load was 12 hrs for fall for football players. That’s why players take classes in the summer – to pick up the hours and remain on track to graduate in 4 years. If guys were taking a full load plus 8-10 hrs in the summer, they’d graduate even sooner than the usual 7 semesters.
If you figure 128 credit hours for graduation (16hrs per semester x 8 semesters), a player could take 12hrs/18hrs in fall/spring for 3 years, pick up 8-10 hrs in 3 summer terms, 12hrs in fall of senior year, then graduate.
I guess those dudes could be right, but I tend to doubt it.
Perhaps they’re off on their math–they didn’t outline it in detail. But it’s pretty ridiculous if they can’t even drop down to 12 credits.
To be considered a full time student, you have to take 12 credit hours: http://registrar.nd.edu/students/stufaq.php#fullpart. I imagine that a plurality of the players take 15, a large minority take 12, and then a select few take 18 like Corey Robinson or Redfield with his intensive Mandarin course. I didn’t listen to the podcast, so I’m not sure how they calculated the schedule but I was under the assumption that because the student-athletes were taking summer courses, they took 12 credit hours during fall and spring semesters.
Yea if you take 15, you can drop a course halfway through where it looks like you might be in trouble but still retain full-time status. I honestly think that’s a big reason why 15 is the most common load for SAs.
20 years out of ND and this is still a recurring nightmare of mine. I stop going to lecture and don’t take any tests with the full intention of dropping the class. But then I miss the drop date, get an F, and can’t graduate.
I have this nightmare as well. Except it’s not that I intend to drop the course, it’s that I just forget that I have it until the day of the final. Have had this dream whenever I was in school, from HS through my MA program. I’ll probably have it sometime during this go-around too.
Yeah, that’s how it was for football players when I was at ND.
This is because the single most important thing to the administration w/r/t the football team is not wins and losses, but instead the graduation rate. Our record is going to be what it’s going to be, but we’re gonna damn well have 90+% of our players graduate every year. They’ve made a ton of changes to the gameday experience in response presumably to Kelly requests, but letting players take 8 credit hours in the fall will never be one of them. That’s the hill the administration is willing to die (or, rather, lose football games) on.
And they do view there as being something to be gained by graduating players in 3.5 years: those guys who want to go pro still graduate and, as such, don’t affect the graduation rate. So they push for that workload.
Not saying it’s right or wrong; it’s just very Notre Dame.
While I agree that Kelly has had more, and better, wins than Weis, it does feel like a good chunk of Kelly’s wins came against teams that were ranked highly for that season, but for one reason or another, weren’t really great or highly thought of when ND actually played them. Two USC wins against backups while Matt Barkley was out. 2012 win against Stanford before they switched QB to Kevin Hogan and went on a roll. Ditto Michigan State before they switched to Connor Cook. A Miami team going through the motions after the firing of their coach. They are still quality wins, but don’t feel like those marquee wins that are a statement when the entire country’s eyes are on us. The only one that I feel like really qualifies for that is Oklahoma in 2012.
MSU 2013 has to be in there as well.
Yep, indeed it was.
Has anyone seen anything definitive on what happened with the Stanford strength coach? BK should just probably not interact with strength coaches on the field anymore, ever.
NOTE TO SELF: On Saturday, after coaching CSN Jr’s pee-wee soccer game and during the exchange of high-fives and “good game” platitudes, do not tell the opposing coach “bye-bye,” lest he/she misinterprets it as a snide reference to their short-lived amateur coaching career.
Per Sampson, one of their assistant strength coaches said “Bye bye” in a snarky, we-just-signed-your-pink-slip tone as they passed on the field; the “heated exchange” was presumably BK telling him where to stick it. Sampson said Grimes stepped between Kelly and the guy and also got heated with him, and then Longo was trying to catch him later (for a calm discussion) outside the Stanford locker room.
The guy was completely out of turn. If Grimes did that to another head coach I’d be very disappointed. Sampson said “he was told” that Stanford wasn’t going to make a public statement about it, which is fine, it doesn’t need to be a big thing. Hopefully someone told him to keep his mouth shut in the future though.
Just that classic David Shaw pissiness. God I hate that program.
I’m sure, in the spirit of their band, @he meant it ironically and it was just all in fun.@
I like that Grimes had BK’s back. Kind of puts to rest any sense that there’d be lingering feelings over last year’s incident. He could have chosen not to get involved at all.
Or maybe he’s still mad his catch against Stanford was ruled incomplete
WELL NOW I’M ANGRY ABOUT THAT ALL OVER AGAIN
it is possible that the ship be sinking – http://www.ndinsider.com/recruiting/defensive-lineman-donovan-jeter-decommits-from-notre-dame/article_15a2b506-954b-11e6-a068-ebfaa51ef53d.html
Interesting, considering I think even this past week he was tweeting defending BK’s demeanor, wasn’t he?
I wouldn’t take that as too much evidence of anything other than Jeter having second thoughts. This is a guy who didn’t list us in his final five, then visited out of the blue and committed right after. He also, as KG notes, tweeted support of BK last week and the week before, and he re-tweeted Wimbush’s post-game tweet about staying on board the train.
There is immense pressure from the Pitt fan base to stay home; it was always going to be hard for him to ignore that. It’s worth noting that Hainsey, Adebo, Pouncey, Young, and Robertson were all at the game too, and all said postgame (and pre-Jeter decommit) that they can’t wait to make it official.
For whatever its worth, I walked by the group of recruits right as the Stanford buses pulled up to the stadium. Pouncey starting booing them along with some other fans. It was great.
That’s a pretty big loss though no? Is there any chance he signs back up or what 4 star DE might take his place?
No idea what 4-star DE might take his place – the most likely answer right now is “nobody.” On the plus side, without oversharing subscriber info, the services seem to think that he’s sincere when he says ND is still his leader and that, while it doesn’t usually work out, he could very well come back into the class later. They also say it has nothing to do with on-field results, but beyond that are being cryptic. Whether that’s admissions or something else, who knows; I haven’t seen anything about grades being a problem at any point for him, though.
I have a feeling “nobody” is going to be filling a lot of the remaining spots.
BOOO!!
Well, there aren’t that many remaining spots to begin with. I like our chances with Thomas Graham (a lot) and Jamire Calvin (quite a bit, if we push). I would expect to see some senior film offers go out during the bye week that could make things interesting as well.
I doubt pretty strongly that we’ll get Amari Carter, Trey Smith, or Grant Delpit. I’m 50/50 on Foster Sarell and Aaron Banks, as well as Jeter’s eventual return. Devon Hunter is a pipe dream until I have solid reason to believe otherwise, although I’m impressed that he rescheduled is OV pretty quickly.
I think we’ll end up around 22 in this class, but I couldn’t begin to handicap who the four will be who get us there.
50/50 for Sarell is better than I thought our chances were. Getting 24/7’s number one overall would help my fragile psyche even if it’s a meaningless distinction (as compared to 2nd or 3rd or 4th etc.).
also possible that the ship not be sinking – http://www.ndinsider.com/recruiting/star-defensive-lineman-donovan-jeter-decommits-from-notre-dame/article_15a2b506-954b-11e6-a068-ebfaa51ef53d.html
Some good news – https://twitter.com/mikevorel/status/788575994907070464
Of course, the negative interpretation is today traded a 4-star d-lineman for a 3-star cornerback. So, um, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯