win last year; that kid who played against us is a stud, and we played our asses off and won. That was a great win, IMO.

It looked like it could've been monumental and historic, but in the basis of hindsight, it clearly was not. They destroyed us at full strength. They themselves (at full strength) got destroyed by Ohio State. Since the end of the 2014 season, only Clemson's 2017 team was worse than their 2020 team (and that's when looking at the 2020 team in full strength, which they weren't in round 1).

The fact that it's almost certainly Kelly's best win in 11 seasons is a pretty big indictment on his ND tenure. Pat Narduzzi has been the definition of mediocre at Pitt and only been there for 6 years and even he has a bigger win (2016 Clemson) than Brian Kelly does in 11 seasons at ND.

He has no legendary wins on the level of 88 Miami or 93 Florida State. Overall, how many "great" wins does BK have at ND? 3? 4? Stanford 2012 and Oklahoma 2012 could maybe count, although neither team, despite being really good, were titans that year. Should 2013 MSU be in there? They ended up being a great team, but no one knew at the time and the game was a snoozefest, penalty-ridden affair with hardly any pregame hype or extra buzz. But around 3 or 4 great wins for ND's head coach in more than a decade is pretty sad.

Anyway, I originally brought it up to talk about the feeling, not the result itself. There was a lot of joy throughout the fanbase in beating the #1 team of course, but it felt like it didn't mean much for the prognostication of how we'd do in the playoffs and I got that sense too from a lot of my friends (many of whom like Kelly). It just feels like there's no "hope" under him the way there was in 2012.

Lol. Are you serious?

I don't like the video board, turf, the Irish Guard changes, the decreasing frequency of the band's role and the decreasing frequency of the student section chants/organic noise & energy (due to the increase in piped-in music and video board), etc., all of which have come under Kelly's watch. The only one on that list that I'm sure BK did not have a role at all in in any capacity is the Irish Guard. The others I think he either had a direct role in (turf) or indirect/requesting role (the video board/music). I think all those changes have hurt our tradition. But those are all, relatively speaking, inconsequential compared to the faith.

We are a Catholic institution. The change happened probably 8+ years ago now, so I don't recall the exact reasoning, but I think BK requested it because he thought Mass didn't get the players in the right frame of mind and/or they had too many responsibilities on Gameday. That shows a complete lack of understanding of what the Mass is (I can't think of anything more masculine than the Lord sacrificing himself on Calvary), which is a failure on us as an institution, both from a standpoint of educating our players and for not having our priorities in the right place (we can't do a 25-minute Mass on Gameday, because we have to have one more position meeting, that they couldn't do before or after or throughout the week? Or the guys need that time to just sit around? What exactly?).

It's disappointing when the football coach thinks it's not important enough. It was fine for everyone from the devout successful coach (Holtz) to the devout failed coach (Faust) to the non-Catholic (Ara, Willingham). Ultimately, if the Mass is incompatible with football (it's not, by the way), then we need to drop football.

And it ultimately is an example of one of Kelly's biggest drawbacks of all, something I didn't but should've mentioned in my OP: frequently trying to shift blame/make excuses when things don't go the team's way on the field. In this case, it was the fact that they had to go to Mass. But that's far from the only example.

I find it interesting too that that's what you chose to comment on out of my entire original post.

Even if he had won most or all of Tulsa 2010, USF 2011, FSU 2011, Pitt 2013, and Northwestern 2014, I think he'd still essentially be the same coach. The games that could have changed his legacy were obviously Bama 2012, Clemson 2018, Clemson 2020, and Bama 2020, but also FSU 2014, OSU 2015, UGA 2017, and UGA 2019. Had he won a couple of those games, I think you can make the case that he had a national championship caliber team even without actually winning the NC. Holtz had several national championship caliber teams that didn't win the NC, like 89, 92, and 93. Even Kelly's best teams, while very good, were still clearly not NC-level teams.

What I was trying to convey was if BK had only a 7-year run from 2010-2016 that was about the equivalent of 2017-23 (presuming similar results in 2021-23 as we've seen the past four seasons, which is not guaranteed) and then left/resigned/retired in 2016, I think it'd allow his tenure to be viewed more favorably - even if not a homerun success - because he clearly turned the program around, showed that it's possible to still win big here (even though he couldn't do it himself) and then got out of the way, presumably for us to hire the next coach who actually could win the national championship. Instead, we'll end up having wasted a decade-and-a-half under Kelly, an extra 7 years than we would have in the hypothetical scenario.

4 out of 9 if you want to add Clemson '15. I still think that ND got jobbed v. FSU '14, and the 2 UGA losses were close. Talking about winning any of the other 5 games is like arguing about how Gen. Custer's reputation would be had the Little Big Horn turned out differently.

... with added emphasis on that fact Kelly botched the two-point conversion strategy (again) and cost his team a win - or in this case overtime and a chance at win.

Hell, even beating Michigan under the lights in Ann Arbor in 2019 would have built up a slight ounce or two of good will - but instead - the polar opposite happened.

At the time of that game, Clemson wasn't the Clemson that they are today, but I guess the same could be said of UGA 2018. Both teams were expected to be very good, but neither had any recent history of being truly elite, although UGA knocked on the door a few times under Richt.

... Alabama to the wire in the national championship game.

I know what you're saying - "at the time of the game" - but I think with Watson & Lawson etc, it was pretty apparant that Clemson team was exceptional when we played them at their place in October.

Plus, much like Kelly blew the Northwestern game in 2014 by mismanaging the two-point conversion strategy, he did it again less than a year later at Death Valley - albeit with much higher stakes. We were ranked 6th at the time.

So let's never miss a good opportunity to remind people our coach is a moron.

Nobody knew Clemson would have the season(s) they were about to have, but they were #12, we were #6 and College Gameday was there. It was a big deal. That's in contrast to, for example, 2013 Michigan State, when they were unranked and we were #22 at the time of the game and it was a bore.

I do think end of season ranking is more important in judging an opponent, but "time of game" has a bit of a place too, as far as managing hype/emotions/the big stage. Probably like a 70/30 split to me in terms of determining how big a win ends up being (and of course, games near the end of the season have less variance between those two variables).