Blue & Gold Illustrated: 2020 Notre Dame Football Preview
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BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED 2020 FOOTBALL PREVIEW ✦ 33 Either way, it should give many administra- tors cause for pause about engaging in frivo- lous spending down the road, because one never knows where the next catastrophe lurks. Who Will Be Notre Dame's Next Head Coach? Seldom will you see a college athletics de- partment have the longevity and, for the most part, stability Notre Dame did from 2010-19. In the four most visible sports at the school, head coaches Brian Kelly, Mike Brey, Muffet McGraw and hockey's Jeff Jackson all held their positions the entire decade un- der the same athletics director, Swarbrick. The 64-year-old McGraw stepped down this April after a 33-year Naismith Basket- ball Hall of Fame career. With Brey reach- ing 61 this year and Jackson 65, coaching beyond 2025 for both might be a long shot. As for Kelly, he's three years away from becoming the head football coach with the longest tenure at Notre Dame, topping Knute Rockne's 13 seasons from 1918-30. When he turns 59 this October, Kelly will be eclipsed only by Lou Holtz as the oldest sitting coach with the Fighting Irish, with Holtz at 59 years and 10 months before step- ping aside in 1996. News likely will occur sometime this year about extending Kelly's current contract through 2021 another few years. And then what? History demonstrates that envisioning Kelly remaining through the 2020s, maybe even halfway through it, is not plausible. If the program's success rate is similar to what it has been the past three years, it wouldn't be a surprise if a promotion comes from within, especially if Swarbrick, who turned 66 this spring, remains the athletics director. Associate head coach/defensive line coach Mike Elston has been with Kelly the past 16 years and is highly familiar with the school, while defensive coordinator Clark Lea was a strong candidate for the Boston College job. And newly named offensive coordinator Tommy Rees, who turned 28 in May, has been on a meteoric path in his coaching as- cent, or at least at Notre Dame anyway. Among those in the age range of 40 to 50 right now — or supposedly entering their prime — Minnesota's P.J. Fleck, Louisville's Scott Satterfield, Iowa State's Matt Camp- bell, Purdue's Jeff Brohm and Cincinnati's Luke Fickell have garnered high marks for their work. So did Baylor's Matt Rhule, before ac- cepting the head coaching position with the NFL's Carolina Panthers. Yet who would have guessed in 2000 that Kelly, following a 5-5 mark at Division II Grand Valley State and no playoff wins in his nine years there, would be the head coach at Notre Dame by the end of the decade? When the change does occur, will the Fighting Irish be at a point where they are beyond solid top-10 status, and will a na- tional title be a more or less reachable en- deavor in the next decade than now? Conference Call One of the sacred elements to Notre Dame's football program for the better part of a century has been fiercely guarding its independent status. Eventually, the athletics department had to acquiesce to finding a conference home in the other sports, latching on with the Big East in 1995 and then, as that version of the league fell apart, joining the ACC in 2013. Meanwhile, football has remained the untouchable.