Great Grantland article on ND and their never-ending "Return to Glory"

I found nothing insightful in that at all. Seemed like the author put that together in about 15 minutes.

On the "red meat" level, it's great. But it seems a little lazy. It strikes me like one of the "RichRod is losing because he isn't a Michigan Man" articles from a couple of years ago. It is probably true to some degree, but it resorts to platitudes and doesn't come up with anything novel.

It's fun, but it's the low-hanging fruit.

after he channelled his PSU sorrows into a malicious dig at UM after the Sugar Bowl. His writing there was transparently arbitrary and agenda-driven, such as calling CFB's 15-year-old overtime rule a "loophole (!?)" mixed in with various malicious digs.

Meh.

"With every Champs Sports Bowl defeat, the notion that a small, independent Midwest Catholic institution with high academic standards can become a national power — and can recruit nationally — in a sport weighted toward the South (and toward superconferences) starts to feel less and less tenable." - from the article

There isn't really much in this article that hasn't already been discussed to death elsewhere, but here is where he probably could have just ended it, because this is really the crux of the Annual Return To Glory celebration.

It's not a new conclusion, but ND is refusing to change with the rest of the sport, and it will make the football program increasingly marginal if they don't do something in the next few years (never mind the paltry returns from the Big East TV deal in other sports). They'll be able  to win a fair amount perhaps, they'll still recruit nationally, but it won't be under conditions that would satisfy the ND faithful.

If this occurs, it won't matter who they hire, even if they "get it" by their standards - they will simply need to reinvent ND as a school  that understands college football in 2012. That's really part of the problem - it isn't so much their coaching hires not "getting it", but the whole damn school and its fanbase obviously missed the last 40 years of cultural shift in in CFB. It may even have to get to a point where schools simply exclude ND from their schedule, whether it is because of expanded conference schedules or more attractive opponents. 

I also don't know how long NBC would be willing to shell out $15 million per year for a product that is gradually  being boxed into the I-90 corridor in Indiana when they could jump into the uberlucrative market of first-tier rights elsewhere potentially. 

but offers little insight. I'd like to think that Kelly's a little further out the door than the article suggests, and ND very close to killing the goose that laid the Golden dome. I still don't think they fit the B1G's general profile, and earnestly hope that they can whither on the vine; I'd even stop playing them.

Since when has ND not been able to recruit nationally. The 2013 class has 12 commits from 11 different states. I also think the article fails to mention ND playing some ridiculously hard schedules the last decade. take this year for example @ MSU, Michigan, Stanford, @ OU, and @USC.  That a lot of games vs top teams.

That being said they have had a few easy schedules in the past ten years. I really don't know why they haven't been more successful.

of a longer essay. The point should be about the relevance of ND as a standalone part of the BCS or whatever new thing comes.

There is no reason ND cannot be relevant. They DO in fact recruit nationally, and do it well, regardless of their dearth of achievement since the War of 1812. Their lack of conference works to their favor in scheduling. The only piece they have yet to put into place is a genuinely elite coach. Five years under Jabba the Weiss would make anyone look bad. And before any one says it, I don't consider a dominant pedigree in the Big East to be proof of Kelly,s quality. The Big East is simply a lower level of competition, and I say that as someone who went to a Big East grad school. Get the right man in their and ND will be right back on track.

I agree they do recruit nationally, but cannot develop the depth based on their standards that a natipnal championship football team needs.

Notre Dame has a very simple choice. Be the "Academic-Catholic" institution who they claim and strive to be or be a DI football powerhouse.  They have tried to straddle the fence more than most schools (yes, even our beloved Michigan), however at some point they need to make a decision; much like Yale some 50 years ago to be either an academic powerhouse or an athletic powerhouse.  Places like Stanford, Michigan, Cal, Virginia have all maintained high accademic standards, however we all know that there are different standards for our high power athletes, You listen to Notre Dame and they want it all, but in todays college footbll world that will not suffice. Same reason the SEC has won successive national championships.

This is an OK post if it was "Joe's Sports Blog."  The author, though, is supposed to work for an elite blog, and supposed to produce elite results.  

Anyway, I'm still waiting for someone else to connect the dots and mention what the book "Under the Tarnished Dome" did to Lou Holtz and to Notre Dame.  In retrospect, it literally brought down the program and the coach.  Neither has been able to win a National Championship since, and the window for Holtz obviously closed when he retired.  

In an era where almost any given member of the media is increasingly prone to brag, "my pen is mighty," it surprises me even more that this book has never been given its due as an agent of change in South Bend.

The main flaw, or inaccuracy rather, of the article is that he mentions Brian Kelly's red-faced tirades, when in reality they are purple-faced tirades.

Excuses not withstanding. Their message boards are littered with half-ass repudiations of "today's game" and "the southern black athlete not interested in academics" as the reason they cannot  win. As others have mentioned, they pull classes in the top ten (at least on paper) that seem to be racially, ethnically and geographically diverse. Maybe as much as anyone.Yet, they seek to scapegoat atmospherics that are beyond their control and devolve into racism, classicism and self-loathing built on an ancient standard of excellence. They suck  - and I enjoy every bit of their great leap into mediocrity. Go Blue!

Bottom line: if Boise State can consistently beat top teams from major conferences (including the SEC) then Notre Dame should be able to win, especially with their hand-picked schedule.

An interesting article, but I don't buy the argument. ND is fairly unique in a few ways, but not uniquely harder--I just think that getting the right coach is very hard for any school. Politics is important, but Weis was horrible at the politics and at worst it barely shortened his tenure, if at all. If he had won, he'd have been lionized, and nobody would care that he was prickly.

The writer makes says it's hard to balance great tradition and modern relevance, but relevance is easier to build when you've got tradition, and when you look at the last three coaches, top recruits are clearly coming to ND. They'll eventually find the coach that can put it together and be competitive again. Hopefully not for a while, but it'll happen.

This is the same author that uttered the following after the Sugar bowl:

Nobody carries the flag for misguided Big Ten pretension quite like Michigan does, so let us permit the Wolverines their moment of glory before Urban Meyer squashes their dreams for the next decade.

Notre Dame really needs to find their own Brady Hoke.

This is the same article we've read for years about ND. They are always portrayed as some tiny academic institution that wins because of guile, faith, and the apparent ability to only recruit the best alerts and thinkers in the country. And when they don't, the arguments go that times have changed and that perhaps it is no longer possible. Yet, schools like NW and Stanford find ways to keep winning with higher academic standards. As do UM and Cal. And while ND players are portrayed a virtuous men, they still get busted for the same crimes as the convicts at Miami, DAY, and the SEC. So no, I'm not buying that ND can recover and return to glory because their glory never existed the way they imagined, and they seem unable to recognize that to recapture and sense of accomplishment would be to open their eyes.

Don't forget that Notre Dame has also recently played teams like Tulsa, Duke and Western Michigan on their recent schedules as well.  

But the larger problem that Notre Dame has in its scheduling is an inability to get major programs on it outside of USC and Stanford in the last two months of the season.  It's been  roughly seven years since an SEC team (Tennessee) has been on the regular season schedule, for example and until the home-and-home series with Oklahoma, it's been awhile since teams from that conference have shown up as well.  To further illustrate the problem, ND has a four-game series with Texas starting in 2015 with three of those four games being season openers and the last being placed in mid-September.  What would held ND out scheduling wise is having UT play them in October or November.

That's not to say there are exceptions.  ACC teams have been willing to play them late in the season (Duke, North Carolina, Maryland, Wake Forest, Boston College) and Miami has a three-game series scheduled with ND in the next few years that will occupy a late season scheduling slot.  The same goes with teams currently in the Big East, such as Pitt (moving to ACC) and Syrause (also moing to the ACC) and UCon.  Outside of Navy and the other armed service academies plus schools from the Mountain West and as I mentioned above, Conference USA (Tulsa) and the MAC (Western Michigan).  

But is that enough to hold together a schedule that will be interesting enought not only to Notre Dame fans, but to the networks (particularly NBC) and to the larger college football audience?  If NBC's ratings in recent seasons are any indicator, the answer is no.  That's not to say that ND won't shoot right up to the top of the college football world if that program became a consistent double-digit winner that annuallly played in major bowls.  I have no doubt it will happen--but can ND really become a major program again in terms of on the field results?

I think one factor that gets overlooked in all this is when college football went to 85 scholarships, the margin of error for top programs was narrowed somewhat.  A rash of injuries or a couple of subpar recruiting seasons could make a major program struggle.  If you don't have the right coach in place to work thru those problems and to recruit to such a level that attrition, etc. is less of a factor, then even a college football king could have problems.  We've seen this in recent years at Michigan, Miami, Washington, Texas, Oklahoma, etc.  UCLA has had major problems over a long period of time becoming strongly relevant again, and to a lesser degree, the same has happened in South Bend to Notre Dame.

The other factor in all this is the blossoming of television coverage of college football.  If you go back two decades to the tail end of Lou Holtz's careeer at Notre Dame and compare it to today and you'd see a major see change not only in how the sport is covered, but also in the breadth of coverage.  The number of teams that are on some channel has grown exponentially, not to mention the transmission methods outside of network television.  I can sit on my porch (or most any place in the world with internet coverage)  in the autumn and watch all of Michigan's games on either a computer or a tablet right now--that's quite diffrent from twenty years ago.

Simply put, Notre Dame (and most every other major program) has even greater competition not only for recruits, but for publicity.  Another factor is money--when you see that each of the Big Ten programs will be getting $25M from the conference this year as part of their annual distribution in FY 2012 and see that the same number in FY 2004 to FY 2007 was about  $10.7M per annum and you get an idea that football programs around the country to varying degrees are all getting much better funding and access to resoures. 

These are interesting times for Notre Dame.  The most recent around of conference realignment has further weakened the Big East, which acts as the parent conferece for its non-football programs.  Will ND try to continue that associate membership relationship with the BE or will they look to the ACC or the Big 12?  ND also has to have some concern surround the future structure not only of the playoffs, but where they fit into a world dominated by perhaps four conferences.  If Divison 1-A gets downsized in some manner from the approximately 125 teams it will grow to in a few years to an entity that has 64 to 80 programs, where does Notre Dame fit into all that?

I suspect we'll see at least two ACC teams moving into the Big XII to make it a twelve-team conference before long.  If that's all that happens and a four-team or Plus One championship is set up that allows ND and BYU to pariticipate in it, then Notre Dame can probably hold tight for now as long as NBC continues to subsidize them.  

If there's a more seismic shift (not likely, but possible) and we see a 16-team SEC and/or a 14-team Big XII emerge in due course, then we might be looking at a whole different situation here vis-a-vis Notre Dame and its relationship with the Big Ten or the Big East/ACC.

I think the main point behind the article is relevant though.  All major programs in college football need the right guy to navigate their teams in this ever changing environment and Notre Dame is no exception.  Brian Kelly might not be that person--we'll know more in a couple more years' time.  But he has additonal burdens to deal with regarding expectations, the brand's history, etc., that perhaps other coaches don't have to deal with to quite the same degree.  That said, if you're the head coach at Michigan or Alabama or Texas or USC, then you face much the same things as the HC in South Bend.

Lou Holtz is a native of the State of Ohio, not the State of West Virginia. If I know that off the top of my head, why can't this hot shot sports writer know it or figure it out? This mistake, together with the unoriginal nature of the rest of the points, leaves me unimpressed.

The author got paid for this inept, half-completed article? Standards are pretty low at Grantland...

-Confucius

I think it's really just more of a perception issue... Notre Dame's past 20 years have been below expectation, but once you start comparing them to pretty much anyone else over a comparable timespan, it doesn't look that bad. Every power program in the country has had lean years over that stretch as well as mediocre years and good years. The highs might not be as high, but compared with their closest peers (us, Ohio, PSU), they're not so far behind the curve. The problem is, they expect to compete with Tennessee when Tennessee is a powerhouse and Alabama when Alabama is a powerhouse and USC when USC is a powerhouse without being at all cognizant of the bad to mediocre years that come in between those dynasties.