Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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4 JANUARY 2017 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED I n the latest development to what might be best described as the for- gettable football season that no- body seems willing to forget, the 4-8 misery was revived in mid-December with separate full-page ads in Notre Dame's school newspaper The Ob- server and The South Bend Tribune that called out Irish head coach Brian Kelly and athletics director Jack Swarbrick. A group of disgruntled fans and alumni pooled their money together for these advertisements. The first was headlined with "Notre Dame Has Failed Under Jack Swarbrick" and featured a less-than-flattering photo and some harsh criticism of Kelly. Included are bullet-point items that paint an ugly picture both from an on-field and off-field perspective, in- cluding the team's 0-10 record against top-12 teams since 2012, a failure to uphold university standards, and an academic cheating scandal that will likely cost it 21 victories from the 2012 and 2013 seasons. The first ad describes Swarbrick's eight-year tenure as Notre Dame ath- letics director as "unremarkable" — his own words to describe the wind he felt on his way to practice right before student manager Declan Sul- livan's tragic death in October 2012. Then, using Kelly's own words, the fans claim their level of confidence in the coach after seven years is "zero, none, absolutely none." Their frustration is understand- able, but the advertisement is ju- venile. Like it or not, Kelly and Swarbrick will be back next season, and rightfully so. "It was an extremely disappoint- ing year," Swarbrick said during his weekly radio show. "There's no way around that conclusion. It's not bad breaks. It's not a play here or there. We didn't do what we need to do." There's no debating this was among the worst seasons in Notre Dame football history and some changes are coming, but it's reckless to assume one bad year represents a pattern and that all the blame falls on Swarbrick and Kelly. In 2012, Kelly guided Notre Dame to its first national championship game in 24 years, and in 2015 he kept the Irish in the playoff conversation up to the last drive of the regular season. A proven winner, Kelly leads all active Football Bowl Subdivision coaches in victories with 230. And along with Urban Meyer at Ohio State, Kelly is one of only two coaches in the country who have led two different teams to a 12-0 regular-season record. As for Swarbrick, he has been a steady and powerful force during a turbulent time in college athletics, negotiating a deal to protect Notre Dame football independence while placing his other athletic programs in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the premier sports league in the country. The Notre Dame men's and wom- en's soccer teams have won national championships under Swarbrick's watch, as has the Irish fencing team, while the men's and women's bas- ketball programs have become two of the best in the country. While there have been plenty of off-the-field missteps during the seven years Kelly and Swarbrick have worked here together, the latest rul- ing and punishment from the NCAA for the academic scandal that put the football program on one-year proba- tion and will likely cost it 21 wins can't be entirely laid at their feet. "Excessive," was Kelly's one-word summation of the NCAA's decision to rip up and rewrite Notre Dame's history books as a penalty for the undetected actions of one part-time employee who irresponsibly helped a handful of football players cheat their way through classes. In a classic case of no good deed going unpunished, Notre Dame's own transparency and thoroughness during its investigation may be at the root of the NCAA penalties. Had the university chose not to investigate or self-report, simply expelled the athletes involved for an undisclosed violation of team rules, then kept the incident under tight wrap, less vi- brant penalties from the NCAA, if any, could've been expected and per- haps the newspaper ad never runs. No document was left unturned and no detail was unshared with the NCAA during Notre Dame's own investigation. This was a student-on-student cheating event that understandably fell beyond the scope of a coach's surveillance and involved no cover- up or prior knowledge from school officials of any scandal. Several ex- cerpts from the NCAA's 21-page in- vestigation review substantiates that Notre Dame fully cooperated. This season wasn't what anybody expected or wanted from Kelly and Co. But the time has come to let it go and invest in something more produc- tive than vitriolic newspaper ads. ✦ Misguided Ad Was A Waste Of Money And Venom UPON FURTHER REVIEW TODD D. BURLAGE Todd D. Burlage has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2005. He can be reached at tburlage@blueandgold.com Brian Kelly had a miserable 2016, but he has been a proven winner overall as a head coach. PHOTO BY JOE RAYMOND