For the past few weeks it has been rumored that the head coach of the Cincinnati Bearcats football team Brian Kelly would be leaving his current job in order to take over as the new head coach for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Today that rumor was confirmed as ESPN is reporting that Kelly signed a 5-year deal with Notre Dame and will replace Charlie Weis as the head coach effective immediately.
Just another reason for me to hate Notre Dame.
I am by no means a Cincinnati fan (although I am a huge Zach Collaros supporter) but Kelly's decision to leave is infuriating, for a number of reasons, and further perpetuates the 'coaching carousel' that is plaguing college sports, especially football.
Kelly has only been the coach at Cincinnati since 2007 but he was on the way to cementing a great legacy. His record while with the school was 34-6 including a 12-0 perfect season this year. Add to that the 2 straight BCS Bowl game bids and you have yourself a very impressive resume. Sadly though that legacy and resume were thrown away today as Kelly sold his soul to Notre Dame and sold out the players on his team for that almighty dollar.
Yes I am about to pull a Helen Lovejoy by saying, "won't someone please think of the children!" Everyone seems to be leaving the actual players of the Cincinnati Bearcats out of their reports and analysis of the decision and I don't understand why. These kids had an undefeated season going and must now play the Florida Gators at the Sugar Bowl without their head coach.
I of course say "had" because there is now no way in hell they win that game. I have a better chance of having a 3 way with Rachel Bilson and Natalie Portman than Cincinnati does of beating Florida.
Imagine being Tony Pike right now (he is the quarterback for Cincinnati and also a senior). His senior year, which has been outstanding, is now ruined because his coach got greedy and wanted to leave for a "better school" and now his final game as a Bearcat is going to be a blowout loss to the Gators.
Beyond the players being affected there is also the Cincinnati football program that people need to consider. The program was starting to build prestige and become recognized as a powerhouse in the NCAA but now that reputation will take a serious hit. They will need to scramble for a new coach and that man will have very little time to recruit and will inherit a team which will have few returning stars. He then has to set about installing a whole new coaching system. This could mean years of rebuilding and probably some less than spectacular seasons ahead for the Bearcats.
The whole Kelly to ND situation just reiterates the head coach carousel that is ruining college football and ensuring that the strong teams stay strong and the weak teams stay weak.
Who would want to coach at Notre Dame? Their team is terrible and and the 2 best players (Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate) have declared for the NFL draft. Yet there are still massive expectations for this team to be good and to compete for a National Championship. This is not a desirable job and yet Kelly took it right away just because its Notre Dame.
The next step will be Cincinnati hiring a new coach who will more than likely come from a smaller school. This means that smaller school will now have to find a new coach who will probably come from a Division II school. Thus a cycle begins where top coaches go to the top schools instead of being loyal and making their current schools better and force themselves into that upper echelon.
I truly believe if Brian Kelly had stayed at Cincinnati he could have made that program a perennial powerhouse alongside the likes of Texas, Alabama and Ohio State. Unfortunately we will never know as he jumped ship and left his team high and dry.
But the title of this post is "Nuck Fotre Dame" not "Buck Frian Kelly" so here comes some ND bashing. If you are an Irish fan you might wanna stop reading and go back to being a douchebag (2 exceptions to this are my buddy Mike D and Joe Mead of BS Report fame who both rep the Irish strong and are not douchebags).
I am so sick of Notre Dame and having to hear about them every year. They are no longer relevant in college football and yet they get just as much, or more, discussion as any other team in the NCAA. To prove how awful and irrelevant they are they couldn't lure any of the 'big name' coaches away from their schools and were forced to settle on Kelly who despite what they claim was their 4th or even 5th choice.
Since 1995 they have only won 1 bowl game and haven't won the National Championship since 1988. The only reason they are popular is because of ignorant fans who choose Notre Dame as "their team" because that is the only team they know. You know your team sucks when the most player in team history is Sean Aston.
As for Kelly well I hope he fails miserably. Going into the last game of the season against Pitt he was telling his players how much he loved it at Cincinnati and how he wasn't going anywhere. Now just a few weeks later he is leaving them. The man is a hell of a football coach but he is a straight up liar and a coward.
I feel the exact same way.
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