Your 3rd paragraph nails it.

I’m not going to say there’s *no* difference between 10-2 and 5-7… but that’s also kinda what I’m saying, particularly if that 10-2 only involves wins over tomato cans. ND’s mantra historically is winning big games and national championships.

Freeman might be Weis. He might be Meyer. If he’s the latter, amazing for us. If he’s the former, that’s not awful for us. He’ll pull great recruiting classes (like Weis). And he’ll be out the door in 4 years, but it’ll only have been 4 years since we were a consistent top-10 program, so that should help us in our next search (unlike when we hired Kelly and it had been 15 years). But at least Freeman seems to give us more of a shot than BK ever did.

If Freeman’s Kelly, well… at least he’ll be a likable Kelly.