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Post being replied to

Oooh, playoff appearances. by IrishJosh24

I know you aren't saying that it's the right measure, so I'm not criticizing you, but it's really not a great one.

And, even if it were, Lincoln Riley has three playoff appearances. He lost one of those games by 11 to Alabama, and he lost one to Georgia in double overtime. He has been much closer to a national championship than Brian Kelly. He also wins at a 0.849 clip. He beat then-#2 Ohio State, coached by Urban Meyer, on the road. (That OSU team finished #5.) He beat a top-15 Oklahoma State team that same year, as well as top-10 TCU twice. And all those games were by double digits. The next year, he avenged a close loss to a top-10 Texas team in the Big XII Championship game (by double digits). He also won a New Year's Six Bowl (Cotton in 2020). His Oklahoma teams have never finished outside of the top 10. How could Riley not be ranked above Kelly? He has done more in four years at Oklahoma than Brian Kelly has done in eleven at Notre Dame, by almost any conceivable measure.

Meanwhile, Kirby Smart has won at a 0.788 clip. He has won three New Year's Six bowls: Rose over Oklahoma in 2017, Sugar over Baylor in 2019, and Peach over Cincinnati in 2020. He narrowly lost an epic national championship game to Alabama in 2017. In overtime, of course. He, too, has been much closer to winning it all than Brian Kelly. He, like Lincoln Riley, has four top-10 finishes (in five years).

I humbly suggest that any ranking that has Brian Kelly above those two coaches should not be taken seriously. The rest have flaws, sure, and so does Brian Kelly - flaws like: never winning a New Year's Six Bowl, never even having a competitive result in such a game (in eleven years!), having two years of wins vacated, his coaching shrub, an inability to hire or retain good coaches without intervention from above and an unwillingness to fire cronies when it is obviously required, a 4-8 season, and a fistful of unranked seasons. And that's without mentioning his personal failures.

I don't think he should be in the top five, but he absolutely should be no higher than number five. I'd put Ryan Day above him. Heck, he also has two playoff appearances, and, unlike Brian Kelly, he won a playoff game against those unbeatable bullies at Clemson (in blowout fashion).

It's unreal that anyone would put Brian Kelly in the same category as Dabo Swinney or Nick Saban. He doesn't belong. It's been eleven long years. He never will belong up there with the greats.