Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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60 AUGUST 2019 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY LOU SOMOGYI A mong the five Notre Dame football head coaches ever to reach the ninth season in that post, Brian Kelly had the best result last year with the 12-1 record, a No. 5 finish in the Associated Press poll and a trip to the four-team Col- lege Football Playoff. That's also because most of the four Mount Rushmore football coaching figures in the program did not fare as well as usual in year nine: • Knute Rockne (1918-30) was his typically strong 9-1 in 1926, but the stunning 19-0 loss to Carnegie Tech in game nine was his second largest margin of defeat. Furthermore, Rockne wasn't even at that defeat while doing some pro- motional work in Chicago. Perhaps he might have believed that whip- ping Carnegie Tech by scores of 19-0, 26-0, 40-19 and 26-0 the previous four years would not necessitate him showing up for the game. • Frank Leahy (1941-43, 1946-53) finished outside the AP final rank- ings — which had only a top 20 back then — for the second year in a row in 1951, although the 7-2-1 record in year nine was an improvement from the 4-4-1 downslide the year prior. The drawback was the 35-0 defeat at Michigan State in year nine was easily the most lopsided defeat of his career. • Ara Parseghian (1964-74) had his lone three-loss season (8-3) in year nine (out of 11 seasons), and the No. 14 final ranking in the 1972 AP poll was also the lowest of his career. In addition to the loss at home to four-touchdown underdog Missouri (30-26), the Fighting Irish closed the year with blowout losses at No. 1 USC (45-23) and versus Nebraska (40-6) in the Orange Bowl — with the latter representing the largest margin of defeat for a Parseghian team, just like MSU was for Leahy in 1951. • Lou Holtz (1986-96) saw the be- ginning of his descent in year nine with a 6-5-1 ledger after having posted a remarkable 64-9-1 output the previous six seasons with one national title and two near misses. How did they fare in year 10, which Kelly will be entering? Here are the standards, Nos. 1-4: 1. Ara Parseghian: Year 10 (1973) Result: 11-0, national title "From these ashes we shall rise," Parseghian vowed following the aforementioned Orange Bowl deba- cle against Ne- braska on Jan. 1, 1973. On New Year's Eve that same year, the mis- sion was ful- f i l l e d w i t h a pulsating 24-23 triumph against 11-0 and No. 1 Alabama to capture his second consensus national title and third overall. 10 SPOT Brian Kelly had the best ninth year by a Notre Dame coach and now reaches a full decade at the school Another four years at Notre Dame for Kelly would tie him with Knute Rockne (1918-30) for the longest coaching tenure in football with the Irish. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA