Coach Kelly Situation

[Dannyboy]

UC should be in contact with Skip Holtz's people right now. The second BK leaves, make him an offer. Skip has years of HC experience, he's in his 40s, he's an offensive guy and he's had a lot of success building programs in places where success is not common (UConn, ECU).

[Pruke]

The latest from our on again, off again sources over at "the scoop":

Sources tell us that UConn Head Football coach Randy Edsall has met with Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick and it has become very clear he is a candidatefor the vacant head coaching position at Notre Dame, according to our source.

Geez, c'mon fellas.

[broeli]

Per Irishcentral.com:

"Brian Kelly will be the next head football coach at the University of Notre Dame, informed sources tell IrishCentral.
The source, who is a well-informed person of influence at Notre Dame, says the Cincinnati coach is the preferred choice for the job, and that he is expected to eventually sign a deal.
Kelly is expected to see out the season with his Bowl Championship Series-bound team, and then report for duty at South Bend."

[08bearcat]

I think its time to not get a coach who is up and coming. Either really go for a longshot (somebody from d2) or get somebody established and looking for a job. Skip Holtz would just want to go somewhere else. Tuberville (or even meyer) could finish his career at UC. We've gotten to the mountaintop, now it's about sustaining. Finding a coach in his mid-fifties should be preferable to one in his 40s. Been burned too much.

[Dannyboy]

A longshot is too likely to fail. I'd rather have Skip do great for 3 years than have someone come in and lose. I don't think Tuberville has the passion for the game anymore, and Meyer would never come here.

[udonkey]

A longshot is too likely to fail. I'd rather have Skip do great for 3 years than have someone come in and lose. I don't think Tuberville has the passion for the game anymore, and Meyer would never come here.

And even if UM wanted to (I don't believe that he would ever take a step down), he's currently making $4 million/year.

He's not going anywhere but to an OSU or to the NFL.

[Thegreatone]

We need to get Dan Hoard to pull his strings. He is our most important bearcat. He has connections we could never understand.

[08bearcat]

If we have another coach leave after 3 years, under contract until 2013, no matter how good the situation he leaves for, it is going to affect our recruiting as long as we have a hot name. 4th year juniors this year are going to be devastated by this news. The team itself said multiple times they weren't going to trust anybody again, and BK came in and it took almost a year and a half before he really got the team going. This time could be worse because so much of our success depended on motivation.

Every coach in the country will tell recruits that UC will not have their coach for your entire career. That will set our recruiting back tremendously. We need a career ending move for a coach. So, for me, mid fifties is much better.

[bearcat_cd]

I'd have to say taking the ND job would be definitely be ballsy. It has its ups and downs. However, if kelly does go to ND and wins, he will be Jesus, however, if he loses then he's just another coach at notre dame and he will still have made a ton of money, raised his publicity status, and have a resume to get a coaching job at a lot of other schools. In my opinion, the pros outweigh the cons if he does leave. ND still gets good recruits, and Kelly would only take that to another level. It sucks to think tomorrow he could easily leave, yet at the same time he could be staying.

[Pete]

BK has always been media savvy. Remember when he called out all the local media for not sending someone to the BIG east season kickoff event. Now this may just be "homer" thinking, but...BK has been saying for a while that no one thinks Cincinnati is a destination job. How do you change that perception? Well, the best way I can think of is to be courted very publicly by a big name school, then at a highly covered media event, tell the country why you are staying at Cincinnati...

One can dream...

[Ran513]

BK has always been media savvy. Remember when he called out all the local media for not sending someone to the BIG east season kickoff event. Now this may just be "homer" thinking, but...BK has been saying for a while that no one thinks Cincinnati is a destination job. How do you change that perception? Well, the best way I can think of is to be courted very publicly by a big name school, then at a highly covered media event, tell the country why you are staying at Cincinnati...

One can dream...

Fresh out of dreams.We could only be so lucky.

[#41]

All good points. Who would you like?

I really don't know -- there are a few names out there who intrigue me, but nobody I like enough to hire on the spot.

I think Dave Clawson would be an interesting guy to look at. I know most people only remember him for being a total train-wreck as an OC at Tennessee in '08, but there was so much going wrong in Vol's land that year I can hardly fault him for the team stinking. He has head-coaching experience at multiple levels (Fordham, Richmond, and currently at Bowling Green), but I don't think he's got enough experience at the D1 / FBS level to be a viable candidate right now.

Ditto for Dave Christensen, who is coming off his first year as head coach at Wyoming. Christensen has tons of experience running the spread offense as the OC at Missouri and I think the variant he ran there would be extremely successful with Collaros at the helm. Christensen also isn't completely foreign to the midwest (he was at Toledo from 1992-2001), which I like. But, again, he's only got 1 year of head coaching under his belt right now.

Both those two have been guys I tabbed midway through the season as potential Brian Kelly replacement 2-3 years down the road -- neither one is ready for a BCS-level gig like Cincinnati yet, IMO.

Really, there's not a ton of good options out there right now, IMO. I'm guessing that the next hire is going to come without much of a resume, because the guys with resumes who are out there don't seem to be good fits for Cincinnati. I think you're really rolling the dice whenever you hire a guy that has no head coaching experience or who has less than 2 years head coaching experience, since you have no idea what kind of recruiters they are. But, unfortunately, that's where Brian Kelly has left this team.

I'm glad I don't have to make the hire.

[08bearcat]

Even if this all goes as feared, we're still going to new orleans, which would be a blast with kermit on the sidelines, and we're top twenty in basketball again. The crosstown shootout is this weekend, and we're hardly talking about it compared to this stuff. Remember when that's what it was all about?

We aren't a big time football program yet. We still have a miniscule donor base that is mostly young (read: incapable of giving at a high level yet.) Because of this success right now, UC is going to be very healthy and strong in 7-10 years and for the subsequent 20 - 40 years after that. Even if football falls off this pace.

I believe BK when he talks about loving Cincinnati. But Notre Dame, like it or not, is Notre Dame. No matter how bad the situation in South Bend is, it must pail in comparison to the situation he took on at UC: UofL ascendant, fresh off a BCS berth, RR at WV, schiano, levitt and edsall looking like they all were going to win a championship sooner rather than later. And here we are, 3 years later, rr is gone and none of those 3 programs have won a championship. Smallest, least prepared facilities in the big east and no recruiting classes ranked above 75, the smallest donor base by a mile, one of the five smallest budgets in the BCS leagues. And now we're the team with 2 championships, outright championships, and two BCS bowls under our belt - that has kept us out of the really bad bowls that will be eliminated in 2010. Imagine if we were in CUSA and all we got were two trips to memphis.

BK came to UC for a reason. He was a hot commodity in 2006. It was about the city and building something from nothing. These things haven't gone anywhere. But now having done something with almost nothing, twice, and his dream job available in the heart of the recruiting territory he knows so well. He has to at least listen. Clearly he cares about the team and the city. But what else can you do at UC? So many things had to fall right this year for them to get to 12-0. He can build a program, but his legacy is already cemented and the program is still mostly set. The sleeping giants in the Big East won't sleep forever. The league will get more competitive, even if its just because the teams around him start to adjust to his style (see tressel, jim.) So if he turns down ND, he enters into the second phase of his career at UC, one distinctly different than the first, one about raising the caliber of the program, not just winning. 20 years on, VT still struggles with this.

We'll find out soon enough where his interests lie. It isn't bad to want to resurrect something like Notre Dame football. It would be difficult, but if you told me when I entered UC in 2003 that our football program would be ranked #3 at the end of the season before our basketball team was, I would have laughed at you. To pull it out of a notre dame team with talent everywhere, even if its overhyped talent, and to rejigger everything around to make it work must seem like a great challenge. I actually think clausen and tate leaving makes ND more appealing for BK - they add pressure to the job, and expectations. Rather start from scratch.

[Endzone]

I just realized that the toxic cherry on top of this entire thing is this:

What has BK spent the last three years doing? Building recruiting relationships in the talent-rich Cincinnati market. Beating back the likes of Notre Dame for kids from the GCL, etc.

So, assuming he goes to Notre Dame, our next coach gets the merry task of going head-to-head with Brian Kelly to keep kids in the city. Fun.

That is a very interesting point. BUT, a lot of good players in Cincy don't come from catholic high schools. I'll bet if you look at all the local players on the roster right now, the majority come from public schools. Am I wrong?

I'm assuming Kelly will take his QB coach with him to ND since he has been with him for so long. But what about the D-coordinator? What about Kerry Coombs? Will those guys go too?

[RedRocker]

Kerry won't leave this area.