Notre Dame: Kelly, Other Coaching 'Names' Not Priority

Paul Smith - View From the Midwest

Saturday, 05 December 2009 17:35

Michigan City, Ind. — Bob Stoops or Not Bob Stoops. That was the Notre Dame question as of 3:51 p.m. Central Standard Time Saturday.

After a series of pointed denials, including a vow to The Tulsa World, he was not going to be the next Notre Dame coach, Oklahoma's much-discussed and, until this year, hugely successful coach's name surfaced in a Chicago Sun-Times top-page Saturday afternoon "news alert." The answer was still no.

"There are two separate groups," one highly-placed Notre Dame source told CollegeBlitz.com this week. "The one the media prints and the real one."

There is little question the Fighting Irish's first-year Athletic Director, Jack Swarbrick has kept a very, very low public profile in all this. "His plane (trips) can't be tracked," the Notre Dame source said.

So unless someone took up fulltime residency at South Bend-Michiana Regional Airport, a veil of secrecy that would make the Central Intelligence Agency proud prevails over the search.

One insistent rumor said Swarbrick and the university might be announcing their findings as early as Sunday.

But in this mad, mad, mad world of the great post-season Notre Dame chase, its fifth in 13 years, it can only be said Swarbrick and his committee, while pressed for time given the nature of high-traffic recruiting season, are weighing a very short list of names.

For some, Cincinnati's Brian Kelly moves to the top. Son of a Boston Irish cop and highly successful head coach of the Bearcats, who upset Pitt 45-44 Saturday to win the Big East and complete their first unbeaten season in over two generations, earning U.C. a trip to its first-ever Bowl Championship Series bowl, he would seem the perfect fit to an outsider.

But not to a number of people familiar with the search.

Several Notre Dame people insist Kelly is not a priority. "There are some things that don't fit the profile," one Monogram Clubber said without elaborating. "Of course they know the time situation, but they are also being very meticulous."

Some of Kelly's U.C. players have run afoul of the law, for example, not that any coach, be it at Notre Dame, Stanford, Duke or the Ivies completely escapes that. But apparently there have been more than a few instances at Cincinnati.

Assuming Kelly is not a candidate, the preferred list is believed to contain no more than four to five names max. Two of them may very well be Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald and Jim Harbaugh of Stanford. Also mentioned by a couple of prominent alumni is Connecticut's Randy Edsall.

The media-generated rumors included Kelly, Stoops, Florida's Urban Meyer, Texas Defensive Coordinator Will Muschamp, who is Head Coach Mack Brown's heir apparent, and Texas Christian's fiery Gary Patterson, who guided the Horned Frogs to their best season in over 30 years, plus Iowa's Kirk Ferentz, among others.

"The first thing I'd say is that's Notre Dame's business and nobody else's, as far as I'm concerned," Ferentz told Iowa media last Wednesday.

"What they chose to do is their business. If they had or hadn't (pursued him), I think that would be inappropriate for me to comment on that.

"Secondly I'll give you the same answer I've been giving people and we give recruits all the time. I've been sitting here for 11 years now and the people that throw it out in recruiting, my typical response would be to just ask our prospects or any prospects to ask that question right back to the team that's throwing it out there.

"I know (Penn State's Joe Paterno and retiring Florida State coach Bobby Bowden) have been in their jobs longer than I have and I know Coach (Mack) Brown has, down in Texas.

"Outside of that, I'm not sure who else is on the list. Bob Stoops, Randy Edsall, two guys that I have great respect for and are friends. We all came in the same year. I think we're the only three survivors from our class.

"I can just tell you what I've been telling people for a long time. I like it at Iowa. I've had paychecks from different places now since 1981. My first full-time job was here. I'm not a vagabond coach..."

It is this type of response that no doubt could be echoed in Norman, Gainesville (although Mr. Meyer has had several radically different addresses) and among the other coaches preordained by the media, but not necessarily the selection committee.

The fact that Notre Dame has sunken into a blue funk of mediocrity over the past 13 seasons weighs heavily in the decision-making process. So, too, does the modern-day reality of the short concentration span.

Today's bluechip prep senior in Florida, California or Ohio wouldn't know Grantland Rice and his poetic "Outlined against the blue-gray October sky..." paean to the fabled "Four Horsemen" from Jerry Rice. They wouldn't know Johnny Lattner from Johnny Carson, Joe Theismann from John Heisman.

It's a whole new scenario and Notre Dame's name has faded, fairly or unfairly, behind the huge sunbelt power schools. For now.

And that is what this search is really all about.

About Paul Smith

Paul Smith covers the Big Ten, Notre Dame and the rest of the national college football scene with his View From the Midwest.

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