When the Notre Dame saga first began I told my editor and good friend Mach that "No way does Kelly take the job, he likes where he is at and I have a hard time seeing him going there." Mach's response... "No, Chuck he is taking the job." He reminded me about this on Facebook last night and it's a good call by Mr. Mach.
Once again like John Wall who we covered last night, everyone on ESPN loves this hire and I am starting to warm to the idea of Kelly being the head coach of Notre Dame. I like the fact that he knows how to win football games no matter who is at quarterback or the situation that puts it in front of him. Tony Pike and Zack Collaros are not even on the depth chart last year when Kelly had to use them for this season due to the injury. If you do not remember, Cincinnati is 12-0 right now with those two quarterbacks. In my opinion, Kelly knows how to win. Let's not forget that Kelly completely changed his offense after a Big East championship year because he didn't have the right guys to run that sort of offense. Honestly, this is guy is as big of a winner as anyone in the football field.
The other thing I love about Kelly is the fact he knows how to control the media better than most coaches. He has that sort of smart-ass attitude that a Bill Parcells, Rex Ryan, and any other coach that seems to bite the media with one-liners that people can respect. Kelly demands the respect of his players and the media, which is huge. No longer will the media bully around the head coach of Notre Dame like they did with Charlie Weis. If you listen to his press conference, he ignores the media consultant and speaks from the heart instead of doing the "Wade Phillips."
Some felt that the Fightin' Irish should have gone with more of a defensive-minded such as Bob Stoops (they couldn't get him for all the money in world). But Joe Schad of ESPN said on Twitter that Kelly coached seven years on defense before switching over to offense. Once again, this goes back the 'he is just a football coach'. I think Weis was only an offense guy, knew how to recruit/coach offense but he couldn't understand the concept of defense to save his soul.
The one thing people should worry about Kelly is the fact he coached at Cincinnati. A place that doesn't require much education to get into Cincinnati. Trust me, all you have to do is look at their basketball team in the past twenty years and then if I show you the reactions (Note: Much more toned-down then ones of SportsCenter this morning, those were bad) of the players. These guys aren't Rhodes Scholars and not that the Figthin' Irish recruits genius-worthy guys, they still need to bring in smart athletes off the field.
Looking at the schedule, my prediction for Kelly is he wins 8-9 games. I doubt he has a 6-6 year and if he does, it will only be because the players arent there yet.
-Charlie.
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