The Invincible Invisibles?

Coach Kelly is certainly following through on his stated recruiting strategy of going after big skill players who can play a number of positions. Here's what Kelly told Irish Eyes:

"Big skill is profiling out, if I could take 20 guys who are tough gentlemen who fit the profile at Notre Dame academically and were 6-foot-4, 215 or 220 pounds, you’d never be able to track whose playing where. ‘I don’t know, he just takes a bunch of those guys and some play defensive end, some play tight end, some are safeties, big skill."

But some of these big skill guys Kelly's contacted are so under the radar, they have Irish fans scratching their collective heads. Used to chasing 4-star recruits, Kelly's bringing in a Toledo quarterback commitment, a Stanford running back commitment, a Colorado former quarterback/linebacker commitment and two players out of Hawaii, one a former Teo teammate and the other a BYU defensive end commitment.

Here's some video of the Invincible Invisibles (or Invisible Invincibles) and a hodgepodge of notes (not mine.)

Brandon Bourbon
"Brandon finished last year with 2420 yards on 248 carries and 29 touchdowns. Here's a little on Bourbon from a Nike Combine - "Bourbon wowed in all four testing categories, clocking 4.54 seconds in the 40 and 4.08 in the short shuttle, jumping 34.3 inches in the vertical and launching the power ball 45 feet. He finished first in the power ball, second in the 40 and third in the shuttle, which is really amazing considering there were 825 participants Sunday."

Kona Schwenke
"He is a true speed rusher off the edge who can get to the outside before the offensive tackle can set back and anchor down. Active with his hands, Schwenke would often chop the outside hand of the pass blocker as he accelerated upfield practically untouched. He also proved he could mix it up by setting the offensive blocker up to the outside with his first two steps then slant back underneath by using the short swim technique. Schwenke comes out of his stance a little high and needs to improve his overall strength, but he has the athleticism, size and quickness that has attracted over half-a-dozen offers."



Danny Spond

Jeremy Ioane

Derek Roback
"The QB MVP went to Derek Roback of Waverly High School in Ohio. Roback, 6-foot-1 1/2 and 194-pounds, was fantastic with his leadership and decision making while leading the ?White Team? to the 7-on-7 championship. He also had a 4.65 40, 29.5-inch vertical, 8?7 1/2? broad, 4.48 shuttle, and 20 reps on 135-pounds." "Roback has excellent size already at 6 feet 2 and 200 pounds. In 2006 he was a national finalist in the Pepsi Punt, Pass and Kick competition and is an outstanding athlete ? he runs better than 4.8 in the 40-yard dash. He was the quarterback MVP at the NationalUnderclassmen.com Ultimate 100 in June."

Situational Analysis

Esteemed Pit poster Kevin O'Neill (aka Kayo), sometimes reporter for Irish Sports Daily, put together his thoughts on the current situation with ND's men's basketball program and how best to improve it.

Current Situation

Notre Dame finds its basketball team sitting on a 15-5 overall record, 4-3 in the Big East. Its poor non-conference schedule won’t impress the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. Of the 11 remaining games, all in the conference, six are on the road; and the Irish will be the clear underdog in six games. As a result, a second consecutive NIT season is likely.

Head coach Mike Brey is in his 10th season at Notre Dame. Brey started the season with a 188-101 (.650) record at Notre Dame, 88-60 (.595) in Big East games.

Even the worst conference teams have a few good players, and conference road games are a challenge for the best programs, so Big East record is one good way to measure a coach’s and his program’s success. Brey’s best teams have finished first (2000-01), second (2001-02), and third (2002-03) in the West when the Big East played a division format, and fourth (2006-07) and second (2007-08) in the 16-team non-division format. His worst teams finished 6-10 (2005-06) and 8-10 (2008-09). Seven of his nine teams have completed conference play with winning records.

The other good barometer for the program is success in the NCAA Tournament. Five of Brey’s nine teams have participated. One lost in the first round. Three lost in the second round. One lost in the third round. One team lost to a lower seed, one team beat a higher seed, and all other games held form according to seeding.

Most Notre Dame fans are not happy with the state of the basketball program. The most common complaints are that the team should be better defensively and on the boards, and that Brey hasn’t recruited the talent to finish near the top of the Big East every year, to be a perennial NCAA Tournament team, and to advance in the tournament. The number of players in Brey’s playing rotation and his management of players’ eligibility also draw criticism at times.


Constraints

Notre Dame’s administration has imposed three main constraints on its basketball program over the years:

1) Notre Dame has the most stringent admissions standards for basketball players in the Big East.

Admissions standards limit the pool of highly rated recruits available to Notre Dame. Urban public school players dominate the top 50 in recruiting rankings, and Notre Dame will not admit all but one or two of them in any given year. In addition, a large percentage of Catholic and/or suburban high school basketball stars will not qualify academically for Notre Dame.

Perennial top programs like Connecticut, Louisville, and Syracuse have no such admissions restrictions. They can recruit any athletes who meet the NCAA’s minimum standards. Big East Catholic schools like Marquette, Villanova, Providence, and St. John’s have somewhat stricter standards, but they’re still able to recruit dozens more from the top 100 than Notre Dame can. The only Big East school with admissions standards for athletes that compare to Notre Dame’s is Georgetown, and even Georgetown has a star player on its current roster that ND’s Admissions Department advised the coaches to stop recruiting.

As a result, Notre Dame's men's basketball coach recruits from a pool of mostly three star players from suburban high schools with strong academics. Few of these players are prepared to be Big East level contributors, with an average of about one per year able to earn significant playing time right away. Many become fine players in time, but it takes time to polish skills to compensate for other athletic deficiencies.

Virtually every school in the conference has more height, speed, and quickness than Notre Dame, although not all of them have players as skilled. Brey has said that he has chosen an approach to basketball, primarily on offense, that is based on being able to accumulate players who can handle the ball and shoot well because they are abundant in his pool of recruits who can pass admissions muster. He has also said that his teams go to the NCAA Tournament when they defend well in the lane and rebound, and they go to the NIT when they don’t do those things, so it shows he understands those things are important.

2) Notre Dame has maintained substandard basketball facilities for the last two decades.

Notre Dame’s basketball facilities have been woefully substandard for years. The JACC opened in the late 1960s. It was an outstanding college basketball arena in its day, but it was allowed to go to seed over the years. We joke about the duct tape all the time, but it literally was the maintenance solution for an inordinate amount of the wear and tear in the arena. The lack of effort and attention was both obvious and embarrassing.

The newly remodeled arena is a major step in the right direction, but there is no plan in place to upgrade practice space. The men's basketball team practices on the arena floor as often as possible, but it shares the arena with the women's basketball and volleyball teams. Therefore, they have to practice regularly in The Pit, an auxiliary gym in the Joyce Center basement. The Pit has a good wooden floor, but that’s the only nice thing I have to say about it. It looks like a junior high gym without the stage, and like many junior high gyms, the end of the court is close to the wall on one end, and it has padded building support posts just out of bounds on one sideline.

The players’ locker room and lounge was updated when Matt Doherty was hired 11 years ago. The space is functional, comfortable, and nice looking. It is not lavish, but it is not what I’d call substandard. It’s fine.

Facilities affect recruiting. The common theme used by opposing coaches on players Notre Dame recruits is the university is not serious about basketball ... that basketball is an afterthought to football. When the recruits visited South Bend, saw the arena in disrepair and the practice space as it was, they often decided the opposing coaches were right, especially when they compared what they saw to what was provided to the football team. Many recruits came for unofficial visits early in the process, got a load of the facilities, compared them to what they saw at other schools, and never gave Notre Dame serious consideration.

When the pool of great basketball players available to Notre Dame is limited in the first place, it makes no sense to disadvantage the basketball experience itself, but that's what Notre Dame does. The few great players who qualify academically for Notre Dame can get a great education and have top notch facilities at any number of schools. Off-putting facilities hurt the cause.

The Joyce Center renovation is a major step forward for presenting the program to recruits, not to mention how much better it is for fans. It shows a commitment to basketball success with the vote that counts most – investment dollars. When -- if? -- Notre Dame adds a center court scoreboard before next season, it will have completed a remake of the arena into one of, if not the, best on-campus game facility in the Big East.

However, that renovation happened nine years after it was promised, and comes at a time when most major programs have opened state-of-the-art practice facilities or have them under construction. Notre Dame ran out of money for a scoreboard in the arena, so I don’t guess that it’s flush enough to announce plans for a practice facility any time soon. I’m certainly not counting on it.

3) Notre Dame has one of the lowest annual operating budgets in the Big East.

According to published reports, Notre Dame’s men's basketball operating budget has been ranked 13th and 12th in the Big East the last two years. I have not been able to find line item comparisons, so it’s difficult to assess the effect of differences such as the rent for off campus arenas vs. maintenance of those owned and operated on campus, tuition charges to the program for private schools vs. public schools, etc. However, 12th isn’t close to the top, and I can’t envision what circumstantial adjustments will bring ND’s budget into the upper echelon of the conference. At the same time (thanks to the football brand), ND athletics creates twice the revenue of the next closest athletic department in the Big East.

While specific data is not available, I can think of three significant line items in the operating budget completely under the control of Notre Dame:

Coaches' salaries. I have no way of knowing if salary has driven Brey’s choice of assistants, but it isn’t an exceptionally credentialed staff. Comfort with people he has known for a long time is an equally plausible explanation.

Travel expenses. Notre Dame moved from commercial flights to charters for its East Coast games several years ago, so the team doesn’t seem to be traveling on the cheap. But I remember reading that the team flew to its recent game in Cincinnati but returned on a bus -- a bad idea when the next game is on a short turnaround to Monday. It’s entirely possible that a unique circumstance caused the change, not an opportunity to save a few bucks.

Non-conference scheduling. This, on the other hand, very much looks like it is being done on the cheap. In comparison to teams from the major conferences and second-tier leagues like the A-10 and C-USA, teams from the lowest level D-1 conferences get paid a lot less to come to South Bend and lack the bargaining power to require a return date. As a result, Notre Dame gets to create an 11-game home non-conference schedule and collect full price for each of them from its season ticket holders. Except for the recent home-and-home series with UCLA and LMU -- the latter scheduled because the away game was a convenient stop on the way to the Maui Classic a year ago -- Notre Dame plays non-conference games against major teams only when it can make a profitable appearance in an early season tournament or a specially arranged game like the opening of Lucas Oil Stadium vs. Ohio State last year.

Does the Notre Dame basketball program have any built-in advantages? I can only think of the willingness to accommodate transfers, and they still have to be compelling academic cases. Notre Dame manages its basketball program as if it isn’t trying to excel.


Mike Brey’s Performance

First, let's look at some comparative statistics:

As noted above, Brey's Big East record is 88-60 through nine years, a .595 winning percentage. It's important to not that, due to ESPN's influence over conference scheduling, ND more often than not gets a disproportionate number of games against that season's high-level in-conference competition. He has been to five NCAA Tournaments and four NIT's.

Over that same time frame and through the end of the 2008-09 season, Wikipedia says:

• Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun is 104-44 (.703). He went to one NIT, missed the postseason once, and won one national championship.
• Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim is 91-57 (.615) with 3 NIT appearances and one national championship.
• Jay Wright is 77-55 (.583) in eight seasons. He went to the NIT his first three years and has been in the NCAA Tournament ever since.

No other accomplished coach has been in the conference for all of Brey’s tenure (or in Wright's case, all but one year). However, several other excellent coaches have logged several years in that time frame:

• Ben Howland was 38-26 (.594) in four Big East seasons. He missed the postseason once and went to the NIT once.
• Tom Crean was 31-19 (.620) in three Big East seasons. He was in the NCAA Tournament each season.
• John Beilein was 40-40 (.500) in five Big East seasons. He went to the NIT twice and missed the postseason once.
• Rick Pitino is 48-20 (.706) in four Big East seasons. He has one NIT appearance.
• Jamie Dixon is 75-31 (.708) in seven Big East seasons. He has not missed the NCAA Tournament.
• John Thompson III is 53-33 (.616) in five Big East seasons. He has two NIT appearances and one Final Four appearance.

Finally, there is a long list of failed coaches who were either in the Big East when Brey arrived or have come and gone since he started at Notre Dame. All had losing records in the Big East. Unless I'm missing someone, Brey and those listed above are the only coaches with .500 records or better over the last decade.

Quantitatively, Brey lags Calhoun, Boeheim, and Dixon over his nine years at Notre Dame. I’d add Wright as a fourth because his program seems to be well established and on an upward trajectory after the first three NIT seasons. Of the newer coaches, Thompson is a close call, but the Final Four is a pretty good trump card, and Pitino has won a lot of games since joining the conference to go with his distinguished career.

Maybe I’m forgetting someone important, but of the 35 coaches, give or take a few, who have been in the Big East since Brey came to Notre Dame, I can list eight or nine who I think are better than Brey, and only Thompson has anywhere near the constraints that Brey’s administration has imposed. For example, as much as I loathe Jim Boeheim, I think he’s an excellent head coach. However, I’ll bet he hasn’t recruited three guys who could have been admitted to Notre Dame since Brey started. The same goes for Calhoun, and Dixon. Wright might have 10-12 guys over eight years who ND would have admitted, but Pitino probably doesn’t have any.

How would those guys do with such a limited recruiting pool? How would they do with rosters of mostly three star recruits? We saw what happened to Boeheim after he lost one-and-done Carmelo Anthony one year and Hakim Warrick the next without recruiting replacement talent –- 1st round NCAA loss, 1st round NCAA loss, NIT, and NIT in the following four years. We saw what happened to Calhoun when he unexpectedly lost several players to early draft entry a few years ago –- 17-14 overall, 6-10 in the conference, and no postseason the next year.

I submit that almost every excellent coach in the Big East would be unable to cope with the constraints Brey has at Notre Dame. When I see UConn run top-ranked Texas out of the gym (54-32 in the second half) with all of those elite athletes on the floor, or when I see West Virginia do the same thing to finally-healthy Ohio State (43-25 in the second half) with the great athletes those two teams have, or when I see long-and-fast Syracuse manhandle the likes of Pac-10 leader California and national powerhouse North Carolina, I wonder how Notre Dame stays on the floor with those teams. Yet ND beat West Virginia and stayed in the games with the other two until the end, despite being smaller, slower, and not as quick at every position. Given the almost overwhelming talent differential in those match-ups, how bad is the coaching?

Notre Dame is consistently competitive in spite of its constraints because is does a handful of things exceptionally well, mostly on offense. Brey’s teams are near or at the top of Division 1 in assists per game every year. They understand spacing, limit turnovers, and keep the ball moving. They have good shooters, and they get them open shots. They execute their offense better than every team in the conference except Georgetown, and the Hoyas execute their offense as well, not better. ND’s offense achieves that efficiency mostly with one-dimensional scorers, and not many of them, runs perhaps the only 75-80 points per game half-court offense in Division 1, and they accomplish that just about every year.

So what about defense? It isn’t good enough; and while it will have some limitations as long as ND isn’t as athletic as its conference opponents, it should be better than it is. Athleticism is tied to blocks, steals, and deflections; but any good athlete can have good footwork, use positioning to his advantage, and challenge shots. Notre Dame lacks in those areas far too often. In ND's NCAA tournament years under Brey, their excellent execution on offense has been coupled with solid to very-good interior defense and rebounding. I have never known ND to have an exceptional perimeter defense -- although, oddly, this is the one year that has opponents making a low percentage of their three point shots – just 32.9% in seven conference games to date. Excellent shooters are in shorter supply in this year’s Big East.

I'm left wondering what Brey could do if he had just two more outstanding athletes in the program every year, if the academic constraint weren't so severe and if it looked like ND was more committed to basketball success over the years. Imagine how good this offense would be with two more guys as talented as Luke Harangody in the lineup. Put a real college center like Greg Monroe and a multi-dimensional scorer like Austin Freeman in the lineup, and this offense would be unstoppable.

Constraints have made accumulating great athletes difficult although the new arena should solve part of that problem. However, constraints aren’t Brey's only recruiting issue.

When the team relies on so many three-star guys who take time to become contributors, being thin in one of the upper classes hurts the team. On the heels of Brey’s early success, including a trip to the NCAA Tournament round of sixteen, he recruited a one man class (Rob Kurz); and the current sophomore class, also recruited on the heels of two very good seasons, has no scholarship players. Transfers and redshirts have redistributed the classes on the current roster a little, but a complete recruiting whiff is inexplicably and inexcusably bad.

In addition to the recruiting class gaps, position gaps have stalled the program. Last year, for example, Luke Harangody was essentially an undersized center playing with four guards in the rough-and-tumble Big East. The only other active guys with big man size and any chance to have big man styles of play were Ty Nash, who apparently wasn’t ready to play in Brey’s eyes, and Luke Zeller, who seemed inclined to play up to his size no more than a couple of games each year.

If a coach knows and says that his teams go to the NCAA Tournament when they defend well in the lane and rebound well, how does he have three big men total, one he has known to shy from the lane for the first three years of his career? How can he not find three three-star big men every two years who are inclined to mix it up on defense and on the boards?

When Brey should have been able to parlay some on-court success into solid recruiting classes at the very least, his recruiting has been at its worst. The gaps have set the program back when it had a chance to establish itself as a perennial NCAA Tournament team, and being there every tear is a big key to tournament success. The constraints are real, but they don’t account for the gaps. This is, in my estimation, Mike Brey’s biggest problem; and whatever is the second biggest problem pales in comparison.


In Summary:

My evaluation of Mike Brey:

• An outstanding offensive coach
• Wanting as a defensive coach
• Inexplicable recruiting gaps stall his program every time it seems to have some momentum
• One of the better coaches in the Big East over the last decade
• Has done pretty well despite his constraints
• Probably would do better with relaxed constraints, but I can't prove it
• I don’t know that other coaches would do better with the constraints, either

What I Would Do

The way I see it, senior management is the biggest problem, but many fans think the solution is to fire middle management. Middle management has actually done pretty well considering senior management’s incompetence ... or senior management’s intentional decision to be no better than okay.

I would not invest in a business whose leaders think like that. I’d rather invest in a business that gives its middle managers the tools they need to succeed and then holds them accountable for using them well. I see neither when it comes to Notre Dame basketball.

I’m certain that, short of a scandal, Notre Dame will not be changing coaches after this year, and a change is unlikely next year unless the program has a complete collapse. I’m equally certain that Notre Dame is in no position to attract a new coach who has much of a track record because Notre Dame would have to promise changes, and its failures to deliver on past promises are well known. If and when a change is to be made, I’d like to be fishing the best hole.

I know ND will have tougher academic standards than anyone else. I know it isn’t going to start on a practice facility any time soon, certainly not before it puts the last expensive piece into the arena. I know its budget won’t jump to the top of the conference in one year. I’m not expecting a lot, but I don’t think it will take much to get much better performance from Mike Brey at Notre Dame.

I have three recommendations:

Target at least one admissions break every two years with one in each of the first two years to prime the pump. I am not talking about poor students. I’m talking about average to good students with solid high school curricula, ability to do the work Notre Dame requires, and the desire to earn a degree. This will probably triple the pool of top-100 guys Notre Dame can recruit. Expect Mike Brey to meet the quota, and don’t feel bad about firing him if he doesn’t.

Alter the budget for assistant coaches. Commit the budget dollars necessary to hire one of the top assistants in Division 1, instruct Mike Brey to hire one who specializes in defense, and insist that the guy get free reign to improve the team’s performance on that end of the court. If Brey doesn’t get someone and/or the team doesn’t improve on defense, don’t feel bad about firing him.

Modify the budget to accommodate a better non-conference schedule. A woeful schedule doesn’t prepare the team well for the Big East schedule, makes it more difficult for ND to get NCAA tournament bids when it's on the bubble, results in lower seeding when the team does make the tournament which makes runs there less likely, and is boring as hell for us season ticket holders. Book some decent home-and-home series. Play a neutral site game where you have a fan base but near the opponent so our team can have a taste of tournament atmosphere. If you loosen the purse strings and Mike Brey doesn’t do anything with it, fire him for insubordination.

I’m not suggesting anything radical or unduly expensive, and I believe Mike Brey would be ecstatic to have even that little bit of extra support. As I said above, imagine Brey’s offense with two more excellent scorers that we accustomed to seeing; and imagine improving the defense by five points better per game. The only other thing standing between Brey and a .700 Big East winning percentage and a consistent top four finish would be the recruiting gaps, and only Brey himself can fix those.

The best case is that Brey will succeed. The second worst case is that Notre Dame will be much better positioned to hire a really good replacement. All they’ll have to do for the new guy is promise a practice facility; and who knows, maybe that will be on the board by then.

The worst case is that Notre Dame isn’t willing to bend even the little bit I recommended; and if that’s the case, there is neither much reason to change coaches nor much reason for me to renew my season tickets.

Kelly and Leadership Part I: Developing Players from the Inside Out

• See also: Will Kelly's Offense Work at ND?
• See also: Brian Kelly and the Secret Sauce

(The Rock Report) - One of the key building blocks behind Brian Kelly's success (despite not having a recruiting class finish in the top 50 in the country at Cincinnati ) is his emphasis and structured approach to developing players physically and mentally. It's a philosophy that goes back to his days at Grand Valley State where he not only coached offense and defense at different stages, but oversaw the Strength and Conditioning program.

When you're starting out with less raw material than other teams, you have to be better than your competition at developing the players you do have and Cincinnati had less talent than all but two teams on their schedule this past year.

Think about all of the talent on USC's defense, but the Bearcats played better defense against Oregon State than USC did. You can only do that through effective player development, but Kelly's focus, taking a page from Holtz, is on developing the mind as well as the body. When I was evaluating Kelly as a candidate, the thing that stood out (besides his success on the field) was his ability to develop and motivate players to push beyond their limits.

Said Kelly, "You can move them to a level that they can't get to by themselves. That's player development. That's at the core of what I mean, to get people to do things that they normally wouldn't do on their own. "

And that’s exactly where ND has failed recently. Only Michigan, among traditional powers, has done less with the talent they’ve had. If you look at where Notre Dame’s talent level was (and this is based on stars so it’s just a relative assessment), Notre Dame had more recruited talent than Michigan this year and even more than Florida did when they won the national championship (Florida is that orange line on the left, ND is the blue line.)

What was missing was player development. Kelly spoke at the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association clinic last February and outlined his holistic approach to development, of mind, body and skill. Kelly’s philosophy is to develop players along five parameters:

* Intellectual Development
* Spiritual Development
* Social Development
* Skill Development
* Physical Development

Does anyone think Weis even had a philosophy for developing players? Kelly has put together a systematic approach that Kelly describes as going far beyond what fans normally think of as development. "It's not just about being bigger, faster, stronger, it's getting your players to trust. It's getting your players to be accountable on a day to day basis. It's developing them as young men, and you have to do that through relationships...”

Kelly’s philosophy centers around the coaches getting to know his players intimately and transforming them across all five development areas. When people say he sounds like Lou, it’s because Kelly’s literally taken a page out of Lou’s book. In “Winning Every Day”, Lou states that he every player needs to know the answers to three questions about his coaches and his peers: 1. Can I trust you? 2. Are you committed to excellence? 3. Do you care about me?

That’s Lou, here’s Kelly describing his success (see a parallel?), "We did it by working on winning every single day. If I wait till Saturday to work on winning we'd win as many as we lose. The very first day we worked on winning... and what do you now know about winning you can't start winning until you stop losing (getting rid of bad habits) and you can build that every single day… our kids cared about each other, they trusted each other, they were committed."

Trust, commitment to excellence and caring. The reason people see a lot of Holtz in Kelly, is because they share not only the same philosophy, but the same words to describe it.

Here’s Kelly describing his philosophy in a little more depth, "I want those that understand how important it is to be committed, how important it is to trust how important it is to respect others... and if those sound like traditional values they are... and they can be espoused on a day to day basis... and working on winning every day allows you to do that and it creates the atmosphere that you're not just punching the clock. When you start caring about each... and I'm not saying you have to sing Kumbaya at 5 o'clock before you go home or have campfires together. But ya got to care about each other, that you're all in it for the same reason. that you all want to work on winning every single day... and guess what happens, one of the greatest things starts to rise to the top... it's called pride in what you do."

Here are the two coaches talking about their philosophies:

They also share two other attributes in their styles, attention to detail and a focus on accountability. When Holtz first walked into the Notre Dame locker room, he kicked a player's feet off a chair and sent the entire team a clear message that things would be different. Kelly walked into the locker room and immediately noticed what a mess the lockers were in. He thought that sent a terrible signal to the team about attention to detail and respect and gave every player a diagram showing them how their lockers should look. That’s signal value. Now, every day when a player arrives for practice his locker will remind him about attention to detail.

In his press conference, Kelly talked about what attention to detail and being purposeful means on a practical level:

"Eating at Burger King at 3:00 in the morning is not going to make you the best for your 8:00 workouts. Not being on time, not paying attention to detail, not being purposeful in what you do on a day to day basis. Attention to detail is absolutely crucial in this process of winning, and so when I talk about working on winning, I mean you do that from the first day you step on this campus if you want to win. You don't win on Saturdays with Xs and Os. You win on Saturdays because you've been working on it all week, and so it's that attention to detail. It's morale, it's camaraderie, it's one voice. "

The final thing they both focus on is accountability. As Lou says, "you can't have ten people be outstanding and have one person foul up." Kelly says, "you can't do it unless everyone in the organization understands they're an important piece of the puzzle."

What impresses me about both coaches is their ability to motivate their players to play above their own expectations. Former Grand Valley State player Spencer Calhoun described it this way,"He really challenges you to perform... he encourages you enough, but at the same time, he's challenging you to step your game up to the level that he sees the potential at, and the coaching staff saw the potential in you to play. I think I was (a better player), and I think more importantly, I was a much better person... I think he really helped complete me as a man, with being a tough-minded individual. That's one thing he always talked about, was mental toughness and being able to see things and not get down after one little mistake or one bad play.”

Kelly believes in mental development, but he’s also put a premium on physical development and has given Strength and Conditioning coach Paul Longo coordinator level influence. Longo is intimately involved in player development, which he calls half art and half science, but you can’t practice the art if you don’t constantly evaluate players, and not just watching them in the gym, but watching them them practice and play. From many accounts Notre Dame's players were allowed to cakewalk through workouts under Weis. That won't be the case with Longo. It’s a philosophy Kelly developed years ago, “At Grand Valley State I understood the absolute necessity to be involved as the head coach with strength training and conditioning. So I did it. It was part of my hat that I wore.”

I read Lou Somogyi's recent column, Conditioned to Hear the Same Rhetoric, on how we hear the same thing every coaching change, but I think Lou's missing the fact that Kelly has a fundamentally different approach to Strength and Conditioning that has been tested over years. This isn't "words" (rhetoric,) but deeds. (I do think Lou is the best writer covering ND football and has been for a long time.)

Here’s how Kelly thinks of Strength and Conditioning from a development perspective, “ The third leadership position I want to talk about is our strength and conditioning coach, Paul Longo. And is absolutely crucial to the development of our student athletes here. I think we all have heard the need for student development and player development. Paul has already hit the ground running. We began our workouts yesterday and we are in the process now of implementing our off-season conditioning program, which is absolutely crucial to our success. Though it's not just about offense and defense and special teams, it's about developing your players. And those are three key leadership positions within the program. Paul Longo has been an integral part of the success we've experienced over the last six seasons... He has done an incredible job of not only developing our players and getting them ready to play championship football in our program, but also helping prepare them for the NFL. Paul joins our offensive and defensive coordinators as leaders of this program. He cuts across the traditional strength and conditioning coach mold because he builds relationships with all players and coaches and serves as a leader, not just in the weight room, but throughout the program. Paul is a critical addition to our program because, arguably, no coach will have more contact with our players throughout the whole year than our strength and conditioning coach. Based on his track record and what I have personally witnessed, I can't wait to see how he'll make our team better moving forward."

Here’s how Longo describes their unique player development model:

”I believe the biggest key has been Coach Kelly's philosophy for how I fit into the program. I call it the third coordinator model. Too often, the strength coach is seen as a member of the support staff -- an athletic department employee like the sports information director or equipment manager. But in reality, every strength coach knows we actually play a much larger role than that. Football player development, especially at the NCAA Division I level, is a year-round process, and the football coaching staff has only limited access to the players in the off-season. Strength coaches spend far more hours with the football team than anyone else throughout the year. I take a special leadership role in our football players' development. Under Coach Kelly's direction, they see me right next to the offensive and defensive coordinators on our program's totem pole. What does this really mean? On a daily basis, it means I'm not just a guy in the weight room who tells them how to lift. I follow the football team closely and build personal relationships with the players, so I fully understand the team dynamics and the buttons to push to get individual players motivated. I know who the team leaders are, and the players know that I communicate regularly with the coaching staff about their performance during our strength and conditioning sessions. For instance, if a second stringer works his tail off in the weight room because he wants to challenge for a starting spot, he knows he's not toiling in obscurity. And if a player is slacking off, he knows I have the authority to hold him accountable. I see who our hardest workers are, and my input to Coach Kelly and his assistants is reflected in playing time decisions. Everything we do in our football strength program is colored by that approach. Because the players see me as a leader and not just a lifting coach, they buy into every activity I put them through and understand that my primary goal is the same as theirs: to win football games. Coach Kelly's third coordinator model gives me the credibility I need, and our success on the field speaks for itself.”

One of Longo’s success stories is Joe Staley, a first round pick. “NFL scouts said he gave the best workout of any offensive tackle they had ever seen. He went from 235 his first year to 265 his second year to 285 as a junior to 305 last year. It didn’t happen over night, but he developed in the program. Ross Verba was just like that at Iowa. He was a 235 pound average, slow tight end that liked to catch balls, but he ended up having a good career in the pros after we moved him to tackle. He’s the only rookie left tackle to start in the Super Bowl.”

In the end, Longo says it’s about developing every player on the team.

“We want to raise the average not just the guys that end up being drafted into the NFL. You have to develop the rank and file, and the way they get better is through my department. I think Coach Kelly and this staff have a great feel for where a kid can develop.”

All of this focus on development of the mind and the body is about winning, but winning in a Kelly program depends on a program commitment to developing every player on the team. Ultimately, all of that work came down a simple equation to Kelly, "we played harder and longer than every team we played."

In part II, I’m going to focus on Kelly’s unique approach to building a coaching staff to support this development. As Kelly said, he’s looking for, “ great teachers, great educators, great communicators. So I think I put a premium on that first and foremost."

A Short Tale of Redemption

""I read this book when it first came out and it had a very powerful impact on me. Recently my daughter was going through a rough time and I thought this book would be just the ticket to help her and guess what? She called and thanked me after she read it and passed it to her sister who also got a lot out of it and she just gave it to her husband to read. It can have a pretty powerful impact on the young and the not so young."

""As a son, a father and now a grandfather I found ten secrets a truly inspiring book. I read it cover to cover within an hour. My only regret is that the book was much too short.":

""This book is one of the best that I have read. It is simple, meaningful and life changing. It was recommended to me by a priest as one of the best books that he has read. Not a religious book- but many positive, powerful thoughts."

Will Kelly's Spread Offense Work at Notre Dame?

• See also: Brian Kelly and the Secret Sauce
  
• See also: Kelly and Leadership, Part I: Developing Players from the Inside Out

(The Rock Report) - There has been a "lively" debate over whether a pass-first spread offense can work at Notre Dame, but one thing that became clear during the debate is that very few people knew much more than the term "spread" and that Kelly passes a lot. I've long held to the Holtz theory that the lines dictate the outcome of the game and I'm certainly biased toward the running game and controlling the line of scrimmage. While I like the Kelly hire, his offense is my biggest concern about his ability to be successful at Notre Dame. But I also know that football is constantly evolving and that three of the last four teams in the BCS Championship game ran a version of the spread.

So I asked Chris Brown of Smart Football to help explain Kelly's offense and how it compares to other successful spread offenses such as Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, Oregon and Georgia Tech. Chris writes football analysis, strategy, and, at times, philosophy for his own website as well as Yahoo!/Rivals and The New York Times' The Fifth Down.

Here's Chris's take:

Can you explain Kelly’s offense to us?

Kelly's offense is a traditional spread, developed in the late 90s and early 2000s, with some additional focus on the run game. Unlike, say a Rich Rodriguez or Mike Leach, he didn't have specialized players to push his offense too far in either direction. With Crist it'll probably be similar to what he did with Tony Pike.

The Run Game: The run game is interesting but, without a big running QB, fairly straightforward. A lot of zone and "dart"-- an iso play where the backside tackle pulls and acts like a fullback would as lead blocker.

The Pass Game: For passing game the precepts have a lot in common with the run and shoot: the receivers release vertically or do a "switch release"--ie criss-cross--and then release vertically. The basic theory is to threaten the defense vertically and to make all the pass plays look the same, at least from the start.

This is designed to combat the "pattern reading" coverages made so popular by coaches like Alabama's Nick Saban -- it's impossible to "pattern read" if all the routes begin the same way.

The first option is to hit the fade or seam routes, but, if they can't get open on their initial moves, the receivers then have freedom to settle or curl/hook back to the QB in the open areas. On these routes,

Kelly also uses a wider variety spread of formations than most spread teams do. One common example is his use of quads (four receivers to side).

The goal is to isolate a guy like Floyd one-on-one on the backside, and either throw it to him against single coverage or, if the defense rotates defenders to his side, work a good pass combination against fewer defenders (because they have rotated to Floyd backside) to the four receiver side.

One thing Kelly uses a lot -- though I like this aspect of his passing game the least, in execution if not also in theory -- are his sprint out passes.

For example, the Oklahoma and Texas pass games are fairly different than Kelly's, especially Texas’s which uses limited formations and focuses almost exclusively on underneath routes.

Kelly instead focuses on routes that at least begin by attacking vertically, even if the eventual throw isn't always an over the top one.

Compare this to Weis' pass game which focused on trying to constrict the defense with runs and screens to set up the big bomb to the outside or deep post to the middle; Weis always wanted to throw over the top of you. This is one reason why Weis's offense, despite several years of a lot of success, could be so inconsistent: there was a big learning curve, its reliance on big plays required great talent with great experience (Quinn/ Samardzija and Clausen/Tate/Floyd); and the big plays resulted in a high variance rate for the offense -- if they weren't being hit the offense could stagnate for long periods of time. Kelly, by contrast, focuses on spreading you out to find the open and consistent passing and running lanes, with the goal being to consistently chew up 5-15 yard gains.

How does Kelly’s running game in the spread compare to Texas ’s and Oklahoma's?

Well they all use the exact same plays: inside zone, outside zone, counter (backside guard and tackle pull, one traps one leads), and power (backside guard or tackle pulls and leads). See my article, Defending the Zone Read.

The only real difference is Oklahoma will use a Fullback (somewhat) more, and Texas uses a tight end a lot. Otherwise they’re the same running plays every NFL and college team runs.

Does the relative lack of a fullback or tight end affect Kelly's run game?

Well, Kelly (typically) isn't trying to overpower defenses, but rather his run game relies on on space and angles, which is also something Texas and OU do.

Is the question whether Kelly's run game will be "tough enough." There are a lot of answers to this question. One, I feel like the idea that you have to line up with fullbacks and tight-ends to run the ball and be "tough" is overrated. The best rushing team in the NCAA last year (other than Nevada) was Georgia Tech, whose flexbone offense focuses on space and angles as well. On the other hand, no, Kelly's is not going to be a "smash mouth" offense. It's fine if you want to be smash mouth, but it seems like a square peg in a round hole to want Kelly to be that way; he was hired because he's won everywhere he's been running his style of spread offense. I don't think he needs to change because he's at Notre Dame and not Cincinnati; players are players.

A couple comments on what kind of success I expect his run game to have. First, will he run it 45 times a game? No. Will he have some big rushing games? Yes. I fully expect his team to average more yards per carry and per game than Weis's teams. Indeed, Kelly's Cincinnati team -- even if you exclude Zach Calloros, the mobile quarterback who filled in for an injured Tony Pike -- had more than 300 more yards rushing than Notre Dame and averaged more than a full yard per carry more.

But how do you do that without all those big guys blocking? Remember, a running back who gets 120 yards on 20 carries simply plays in a better offense than one that gets 130 on 35 carries. Everything in the game breaks down to math and physics. How many defenders are where, and where can they get to. When Mr. Smashmouth himself Lou Holtz went to South Carolina and went 1-11, he let his son Skip Holtz install a spread and they went 8-5 and beat Ohio State in a bowl game.

An even better example of not getting confused by whether a team is powerful if it is spread is to think of Florida. Florida is the biggest "power running" team in the country. Yes they line up in the shotgun and use the spread, but it's all power runs, veer option, and straight ahead plays. They expect their line to overpower yours.

But again, is this the only way to run the ball? Back in the day when Holtz had multiple all-americans at the offensive line, he could just run the ball over anyone he wanted. You didn't need to be a strategic genius to figure out if my guy is four inches taller, weighs 50 pounds more and bench presses 200 pounds more then I can run the ball pretty well. But in modern college football it's hard for one team to stockpile so much talent that scheme is irrelevant. It's no shock that the recent National Champions have been Florida and Alabama, two teams with (a) lots of talent, and (b) very precise, very disciplined and very smart coaches.

Indeed, you can run the ball effectively in lots of different ways. Contrast Florida's rushing offense with two of the other best in the land last year, Oregon and Georgia Tech, whose offenses both relied heavily on leverage, angles, and getting numbers to the point of attack.

I hear Notre Dame fans about wanting a "power team," but would they want Jim Tressel's offense (especially without Terrelle Pryor or Troy Smith)? A lot of fullbacks and tight-ends and "power runs" without a ton of success.

Everything requires a balance.

All I mean is that people should keep an open mind: spread doesn't always mean finesse; "balance" is not just running and passing the same amount, it requires a bit more of "game theory" and the bottom line is that Kelly has won everywhere he's been, and I would not get wrapped up in the idea that a team like Texas or Oklahoma -- which succeeds largely because it has so much more talent than its opponents -- has a better scheme than what Kelly does. Schemes are adaptable to players, and they often percolate up from smaller schools where there is room to experiment.

That said, no one can predict how successful he'll be, and I'm not saying I think his offense is perfect. It's quite basic, which is a good thing in that he'll be able to teach it quickly but there isn't a ton of variation within it. And I would like to see Kelly incorporate an H-back or tight end/fullback type who aligns where a tight end would but off the line of scrimmage. Alabama and Florida, to use just two examples, used those types of players to great effect the last couple of years, and they fit well within the spread construct for both run plays and pass protection.

In the end, Kelly believes in his offense, has won everywhere he's been, and I would be surprised if it didn't work at Notre Dame. He's a spread offense pass first guy, and that's who was hired. Did Saban stop coaching his defense when he was hired? Did Urban Meyer junk his O? Both have adapted over time (which Weis did not), but he was hired to do what he knows how to do.

Can Kelly’s offense work as well against talented teams, like USC, as it has against the less talented teams Cincinnati has played?

The biggest question to ask for a pass first spread when they face a talented team like USC is, “By spreading out and isolating receivers, are they generating match-ups they can't win?” Stated another way, “If I go five wide and the defense has five good cover men who can all guard them, have I done myself any favors?”

For example think about a frequent ND opponent, Purdue. Joe Tiller and Drew Brees had a lot of success against some of those Bob Davie teams, but as teams recruited better skill players and used better schemes against the spread Purdue became easier to defend. Purdue changed their offense later under Tiller. I'm not saying Kelly runs the Joe Tiller offense, but just using Purdue as an example.

The concern with this approach is that if you play teams with top talent that you won't win any of the one-on-one match-ups. Teams have to decide whether they have a better chance of winning one of many one-on-one match-ups or if they can recruit the right players to win the big battle at the line of scrimmage? Kelly’s chooses to use formations and match-ups to spring one guy and he's won a lot of games as have many top spread teams.

Now think about the converse. If you do have stud players who can win the one-on-one match-ups, then spreading out the defense can work amazingly well. How many teams can guard them effectively? The answer is not many and this is why the schools who can recruit a lot of talent like Florida, OU and Texas adopted the spread; they have so much talent the balance of match-ups favor them. That's why I think the spread is now more of an "amplifier" of talent than it is an equalizer offense (as it was in the early 2000s).

The idea of "controlling the LOS" assumes that you have the players to basically out-physical a defense. Again, think of Holtz at South Carolina. He didn't have SEC quality linemen so suddenly his run you over offense (which had begun to stagnate at Notre Dame too) no longer was relevant. The point is not to aspire to South Carolina levels, but instead to realize that merely "controlling the line of scrimmage" is not an end of itself, and in any event there is more than one way to go about it.

Indeed, while recruiting is a huge part of being a successful coach, you really can't rely on simply outrecruiting your opponents every year and then just running them over. Stanford had a boss at running back this year, but we'll see how it works in the future when he's gone. It's more important to have a structure in place; when you can do that, you employ the power concepts, but otherwise you focus on putting your kids in position to win, not prove a point about anyone's toughness. And again, using a few super talented teams is not a good example because, by definition, they can overpower their opponents.

As mentioned above, Kelly doesn't really care about what phase is moving the ball; it's just about moving it. On a yards per play/game theory basis, passing is more efficient than running, though running is by no means obsolete. They complement each other, but it isn't about just running as much as you pass or for as many yards. It's about keeping the defense off balance and making them uncomfortable.

What’s the bottom line?

Will Kelly's offense will work? Structurally and schematically it's fine. He's not an offensive genius, but (a) who really is? and (b) didn't you guys just go through that "decided schematic advantage" business with Charlie Weis? (Beware of coaches claiming genius.) He knows his offense, and by that I mean more than he schemes well; he knows how to coach his offense, down to the little fundamentals of receiver releases versus press coverage, quarterback reads and ball faking, line technique, and the like. Kelly also gameplans well even if the offense itself is pretty straightforward other than being a true four or five wide spread. And, ultimately it will be about playmakers making plays. He should give them opportunities to do that.

In the end, I can basically guarantee that the run game will improve from Kelly and, also, that there won't be as much reliance on a few big bomb plays or the receiver needing to make an acrobatic catch. Whether that results in a better offense -- and more importantly team -- remains to be seen.

A Short Tale of Redemption

""I read this book when it first came out and it had a very powerful impact on me. Recently my daughter was going through a rough time and I thought this book would be just the ticket to help her and guess what? She called and thanked me after she read it and passed it to her sister who also got a lot out of it and she just gave it to her husband to read. It can have a pretty powerful impact on the young and the not so young."

""As a son, a father and now a grandfather I found ten secrets a truly inspiring book. I read it cover to cover within an hour. My only regret is that the book was much too short.":

""This book is one of the best that I have read. It is simple, meaningful and life changing. It was recommended to me by a priest as one of the best books that he has read. Not a religious book- but many positive, powerful thoughts."

No Means No

My mother is one of those social souls for whom exiting a party is three times the effort of entering. She'll say she's leaving, then run into someone on the way to the door. 10 minutes later, the process repeats. Eventually she finds her way out, but it usually involves half a tank of gas used up by my father, who had found his way to the car right after mom's initial pronouncement.

Having observed this phenomenon for over 40 years, I'm quick to recognize it when I see it elsewhere ... like in Notre Dame's repeated dalliances with the Big Ten conference (or, as I prefer to call them, the Integer). Having dodged this bullet in 1998, we now find ourselves looking down the barrel of the same gun, with the conference recently announcing a renewed effort to find a 12th member and participate in a championship game.

Like Michael Corleone, just when we think we're out, they pull us back in.

While we're sometimes accused of tilting at windmills on this topic, Irish athletic director Jack Swarbrick isn't helping matters. While professing loyalty to the independent state of Notre Dame's football program, his statements to the press are peppered with phrases like "we'd sure like to try to maintain [independence]", which is now thought of as a "strong preference" that must be balanced with "implications" in the "industry" of college football while "scenarios play out".

Sounds a lot like those non-denial denials that were so in vogue during our two-week football coaching search. And like Oklahoma fans three weeks ago, we're a little uneasy.

With the Chicago Tribune endlessly beating the drum of Integer assimilation, columnist-by-default David Haugh can't resist chiming in either. A decade of reading his work has taught me that, while he may be erudite on a number of subjects, to call him semi-educated on the topic of Notre Dame and what makes it tick would be overrating him by several orders of magnitude. So for David (since I know he just tingles to read my stuff) and anyone else who may be unclear on the concept, let's review the issues.

Many reasons exist for ND to remain a football independent, regardless of how the "industry" goes. But those reasons get thrown into sharp relief when applied to a conference like the Integer, and can be summed up in three words: Geography, Diversity, and Differentiation.

Geography. Notre Dame sits square in the middle of the Integer's geographic footprint, so at first glance, it might seem to be a good fit. But the value of Notre Dame's brand (because, let's face it, this is a money discussion more than anything) was built based on national appeal. There's a reason update and op-ed columns regarding Notre Dame's pursuit of Brian Kelly were written for or published in Tampa and New York City and Chicago and Boston and Los Angeles and Washington D.C. and Seattle and any number of other cities. You don't waste column inches on stories in which no one is interested.

But how long will that interest be maintained if the Fighting Irish end up playing 9 of their 12 games every year in a Midwest geographic footprint against other teams from that same footprint? Sure, a Notre Dame/Michigan game will pull in national interest for a while. But a steady diet of ND/Minnesota? ND/Iowa? ND/Northwestern? Why should people in Florida and California and New York and Washington care about those games? How soon before their disinterest shows and Notre Dame becomes yet another marginalized regional school, pushed further behind the eight-ball due to its small graduating classes relative to those geographic "peers"?

Diversity. The Integer comprises ten large state universities and one private [edit] secular university. Outside of a desire for scholarship at the 20,000-foot level, Notre Dame has little, if anything, in common with any of them. Notre Dame graduates about two to three thousand people per year, while the Integer factory in total cranks out numbers in six figures. Notre Dame's graduation rate for undergrads typically operates north of 95 percent, and its rates for student athletes leads the nation. The rates for most of the Integer schools, by comparison, are downright embarrassing.

When you join a conference, the needs of the many supplant the needs of the few. Decisions get made by the majority, and with the masses of humanity on land-grant campuses who (based on the numbers) really don't give a rip about the academic side of things when it comes to their athletes, Notre Dame will be subjected to a steady diet of being on the wrong end of 10-2 and 11-1 decisions. Michigan and Ohio State have owned the Integer lock, stock and barrel for long and long. That ain't gonna change any time soon. The idea of voluntarily subjecting ourselves to their whims for 30 pieces of silver makes my brain hurt.

Differentiation. When a recruit comes to Notre Dame's campus, aside from being presented with the scholastic and spiritual ways in which Notre Dame is different from their competitors, they also see the opportunity to play a national schedule. Why limit yourself to games against your neighbors, the coaches can say, when you can play Southern Cal and Navy and Tennessee and Florida State and Pittsburgh and Oklahoma and Boston College and Arizona State, all of whom have appeared recently or will appear on future Notre Dame schedules? Why play just about all your games in flatland stadiums a bus ride away when you can play in Los Angeles, New York City, Washington D.C., Dallas, and Ireland? Granted, the 7-4-1 abomination is hurting Notre Dame in this area in the short term, but that's a self-inflicted wound that could be healed up should the program desire.

Think about how that discussion changes if Notre Dame joins the Integer. How would we differentiate ourselves from the Michigans and Ohio States of the world? We'd all be located in the same area of the country. We'd all play the same schedules. Why should they come to Notre Dame and have to apply themselves when they can just skate by as a Buckeye or Wolverine? Integer membership makes it all the more difficult to set ourselves apart from a rather low caliber of company, and this holds true not only for football but perhaps even more so for Notre Dame's other sports.

Those who favor conference membership have their mantras, of course. Haugh points out that "an independent Notre Dame team with two losses by midseason -- the rule more than the exception lately -- struggles to find motivation. A Big Ten team with two losses by midseason after expansion would have a shot to win its division and play in the lucrative conference title game."

What he fails to note is a two-loss Notre Dame team doesn't deserve to play in a "lucrative conference title game" or any other high-profile contest. They should earn their way into those games like they always have in the past. The solution is to improve the product on the field so standards are met, not dumb down expectations to the point that a "conference title game appearance" is viewed as something to applaud.

National Championships are remembered forever by the people who saw them. Conference titles are recorded on banners that everyone sees but no one looks at. The BCS gives mediocrities access to the championship structure by virtue of their membership in a particular group of teams. And yet those mediocrities scream about how Notre Dame gets "special treatment", even though you'll never see a 9-3 ND team even sniffing a BCS bid like Purdue and Stanford have in the past. Even Alanis Morisette would find that ironic.

Notre Dame is a national brand because of the efforts of those who came before -- Rockne, Leahy, Hesburgh, Joyce, Parseghian, Holtz. Joining the Integer will effectively undo those efforts more effectively than just about any choice I can fathom. Becoming a small regional school with a small regional following may be attractive to those who want the money but don't want to make the effort, but to those alumni and fans who believe those heights can be reached, it smacks of being lazy and cheap, neither of which are words I want associated with my school.

Let's also not forget these people hate us. There's no love lost between Notre Dame and any Integer school at any level, from the alumni and fans on up. The Integer and its members benefit from Notre Dame's involvement much more than the other way around, and all they're interested in is our money and the reflected attention they can get from us. If Joanna Barnes could make herself look like a crappy football stadium, it'd be a natural.

So Jack, the next time a reporter or alumnus or anyone else asks you what Notre Dame's interest in Integer membership is, there's no reason to be complicated or to hedge. Keep it simple.

"None".

The car is running, and gas is expensive these days.

For those of you who might feel the need to print this out and mail it to our friend Jack, his address is:

Jack Swarbrick
Director of Athletics
University of Notre Dame
C113 Joyce Center
Notre Dame, IN 46556

Remember, every little bit helps, and snail mail always gets more attention. Forward it to your friends and encourage them to do the same.

Brian Kelly and the Secret Sauce

• See also: Will Kelly's Offense Work at ND
• See also: Kelly and Leadership Part I: Developing Players from the Inside Out

(The Rock Report ) -

“Every victory is won before the game is played.” ~ Lou Holtz

I was out having some drinks and ran into a player on the 1988 team who recounted the back story that led to the Irish’s inspirational thumping of Rodney Peete and the Trojans that year (pardon any lack of clarity here, we were a few pints deep.) A game that, to this day, remains one of my favorite Irish victories because the Irish simply beat the crap out of the Trojans.

To set the scene, USC was number two in the country, but still a favorite over the number one ranked Irish. Before the game Holtz asked the team to assemble, waited until the entire team had joined and then walked in. He announced that Ricky Watters and Tony Brooks had been continually late to meetings and that he could suspend them, but that it was up to the players to decide what to do with them (to suspend them or let them play.) Holtz walked out and put the decision in their hands.

A debate ensued and one of the players stood up and said that this was the game that would define their lifetimes, that they couldn’t let the opportunity slip away and that they should let Watters and Brooks play. But as the debate continued and while players agreed that it was too important an opportunity to lose… they also started thinking that if they believed enough, they didn’t need Watters and Brooks, that they could win without them.

They voted to leave them behind (Holtz later admitted he had made the decision already.)*

The result was a physical ass kicking of the Trojans that was the last real hurdle to the 1988 championship. Holtz found a way to turn a negative into a positive just as he had done when he led Arkansas to their memorable Orange Bowl demolition of the Sooners.

“Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated” ~ Lou Holtz

Every good coach has specific strengths, but the one thing all great coaches have is the ability to lead other coaches and players… and make them believe. Schematics are important. Recruiting is vitally important. Player management at the college level is critical. Coaching management at the highest level is equally critical.

What makes great coaches successful is not the just the ability to sell an idea but to lead their organizations through the tough times to get there. It's easy to forget that the criticism of Holtz was ear-splitting at times during his career, yet Holtz led through adversity and won.

“As a leader your attitude has a powerful impact on others. You have an obligation to develop a positive attitude, one that inspires the people around you to achieve the impossible” – Lou Holtz

What struck me about Brian Kelly at Cincinnati is that he had a horrible QB situation, actually worse than Notre Dame had in 2007, and he was able to work through it, make the players believe and turn in a very impressive BCS season for Cincinnati.

Was the quarterback situation a real and dire problem? They played five different quarterbacks during the season, of course it was real.

Just like talent was a real problem and coaching changes are problems. But Kelly was able to not just sell the idea that success was probable/inevitable, but lead them through the tough times. Kelly said,

"We lied and lied and lied… we tried to tell them everything was OK, and we'll be fine, but obviously, we were quite nervous because we didn't know how it was going to play out. A lot if it was just making certain the coaches showed a good front.”

Bearcat QB Tony Pike wasn’t even on the depth chart to start the season, but he said that Kelly made him believe he could and would win. His replacement at Grand Valley State described him this way:

"He's a salesman, is what he is," says Grand Valley State coach Chuck Martin, who was Kelly's defensive coordinator at the school. "Whether it's Grand Valley State or Central Michigan or Cincinnati, he has kids believing they can move mountains. His No. 1 strength is offense. His No. 2 strength is how good he is politically at getting people to believe in his program. He sells it door to door, which not a lot of coaches will do. "I remember at Central Michigan, somebody asked him how long the rebuilding cycle would be. He said, 'About 10 seconds.'"

What many are forgetting about Cincinnati is that this was supposed to be down year for the Bearcats. They lost 10 defensive starters. For comparison, Pete Carroll lost nine defensive starters and USC stumbled to their worst season since Carroll's first.

Here's the story line on the two defenses:

USC 12 20.4 342.8 vs. Cincinnati 12 20.8 350.3

Not only did Cincinnati lose 10 defensive starters, Tony Pike, the Bearcats starting quarterback went down again this year. When Oklahoma lost Bradford, the Sooners went into their worst tailspin since Stoops' first year. Kelly plugged Zach Collaros in and he recorded a passing efficiency rating of 195 (for comparison Clausen finished with passing efficiency rating of 161.)

Only an idiot would argue that Kelly has is a better coach than Carroll or Stoops at this point, but facing some of the same challenges, Kelly improved his team's relative position from a predicted 3rd in the Big East and out of the Top 25 to first in the Big East and number 3 in the country. This comes against a much easier schedule. Still, the Bearcats own three victories over top 20 teams and their defense performed much better against Oregon State than did USC's.

“Yes, I know that you feel you are not strong enough. That's what the enemy thinks too. But we're gonna fool them.” – Knute Rockne

Urban Meyer is an asshole. Some of his players hated him even at Notre Dame, but he gets them to play at a high level. Charlie can be an asshole too, but his secret sauce didn’t worked with either his assistants or the players. In 2006, his second year, we had players dogging it on the field in what was supposed to be a possible National Championship run.

One of our posters talked to a former CMU player about Kelly, who seems more Meyer than Weis:

"Kelly was demanding beyond belief, obsessive about winning, and extremely hard on both players and assistants. He grew up a die-hard Michigan fan and remains one. He hates Notre Dame. He told me this news was his "worst nightmare." He is convinced Kelly will win a national title at Notre Dame. He said Kelly is a "winning is everything" type of coach, and he'd do what it takes -- from adjusting schemes to treating players like shit -- to win.] He thinks Kelly will recruit very well at ND. He said Kelly is a politician, not afraid of anyone, and tireless."

That, to me, sums up many of the major building blocks of success of college coaches. Looking at Kelly's own playing career, you have to like that he was an undersized, less talented player who became a two-time captain. That’s work ethic and a little Holtz, IMO.

“Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you’re willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.” ~ Lou Holtz

To be successful, you have be able to make everyone around you believe and that’s not a trait normally found in nature. A top level college coach needs that leadership intangible. Some guys are brought up that way in their families, others have an intuitive sense and pick it up, some have mentors and still others work at it and eventually get it or are thrust into circumstances that somehow draw it out of them. Charlie had a mentor in Bill Belichick, but I’m not sure Belichick would win in college and Charlie doesn’t have that innate ability. Kelly, by all accounts to date, does.

Here’s a clip of Kelly on motivation (ignore the sleeping guy.)

He’s also a perfectionist. Here's how one poster who's followed Kelly described him:

”He puts his players in a position to succeed every single play, every single game, every single season, on both sides of the ball.Now his methods of doing so are very tough on his players, as he uses fear to motivate. If you have a single mis-step in practice, he'll basically tell you that you're the worst player who ever played the game, in no uncertain terms. And if you do it again, you'll hear it again. He's a tyrant, but what he does is make practice a mental grind, but it serves to make everyone a believer in him, and the games on Saturday are a piece of cake compared to practice."

Here's another player:

“I think he would win a National Title. I played for him at GVSU and he was a tough, demanding, no excuses kind of guy that gets the most out of his players and coaches or they are out.’

Micah Staley played for two years under Kelly and told eTruth this:

"He was a great coach and I really liked him, but he scares the piss out of you, that's for sure," Staley said, adding, "You played just so you didn't get yelled at. It was a good thing, because everyone would step up to the level that he expected because of his expectations… I was walking back to the locker room and he passed me and he grabs me by the shirt and kind of pulls me up to him so we were eye to eye, and he said, 'Staley, I want you to remember one thing.' He goes, 'You have four touchdowns. You could have 10 if I wanted you to.' And then he walked away. "I was like, 'What the heck?' He wanted to make sure that every player knew he was in control. That's really what it comes down to. And everybody knew that and everybody had respect for him and he was a phenomenal coach."

Now, like at a funeral, everyone says nice things about you at this point, but the difference between Kelly and Weis is obvious when you listen to Demetrius Jones, a bit of a problem player at ND. Kelly told Jones he had a simple choice, you can move to linebacker or play another sport. Jones bought into it:

“You can definitely tell that he’s a politician...It’s a no-brainer. He’s like a motivational speaker.”

Here’s another story from USA Today as recounted by his offensive coordinator, Jeff Quinn:

In Cincinnati’s final practice before Christmas break, Kelly stopped a scrimmage on a fourth-and-3 play. He screamed for Terrill Byrd, the 290-pound nose guard, to switch to the offensive side of the ball.

“I want you to run the inside zone,” Kelly screamed at Byrd, essentially giving a play designed for a shifty tailback to a lumbering lineman.

“Guess what?” said Jeff Quinn, the team’s offensive coordinator. “He got the first down. The team was just going bonkers. It was awesome. Those are the things you want to do with a team. The kids loved it.”

Kelly ended practice on that emotional high, and Quinn said the moment epitomized his magnetism.

“He’s a special person,” Quinn said. “That’s why there’s only so many that walk this beautiful earth that have the ability to do the things that we’ve been able to do over the last few years, like winning a couple of national championships.

“People always ask me, ‘How did you do it?’ Well, you do it every day. You work on winning every day. But that’s the thing Brian does best, get those kids ready.”

Brandon Underwood, a Packers defensive back who played for Kelly at Cincinnati said he had a close relationship with Tressel, whom he characterized as a players’ coach. But he said he marveled at Kelly’s ability to connect.

"He's a great politician. He could sell you water when it's raining. It could be a monsoon out there, but he could make you believe this water that he's selling, you have to have it."

After his USA Today article, Underwood had a polite request.

“Could you mention that I’d like to thank Coach Kelly for giving me the opportunity to be part of the team?” Underwood said. “I’m very grateful. I’ve been blessed to be put in this situation. I just want to say thank you. He made a believer out of me.”

Former Concord running back Spencer Calhoun, who arrived at Grand Valley in 1991 -- the same year Kelly did -- agreed.

"You want him to be up front and honest with you, no matter what the circumstances are," Calhoun said. "You'll appreciate that when it's all said and done, regardless of whatever happens, because you know you can count on someone always telling you the truth whether you like to hear it or not."

"He really challenges you to perform," Calhoun added. "He encourages you enough, but at the same time, he's challenging you to step your game up to the level that he sees the potential at, and the coaching staff saw the potential in you to play."

"I think I was (a better player), and I think more importantly, I was a much better person," Calhoun said.

"I think he really helped complete me as a man, with being a tough-minded individual. That's one thing he always talked about, was mental toughness and being able to see things and not get down after one little mistake or one bad play, anything like that.

"You could always tell, deep down in his veins, that he was going to turn out to be a good coach -- or a great coach, which is what he's turning out to be."

Central Michigan athletic director Dave Heeke on Kelly turning around a moribund Chippewas program:

"He did that with some magic dust and with some smoke and mirrors, and some good coaching as well."

Jeff Genyk, former head coach at Eastern Michigan:

"Here's Brian's secret: He gets his players able to execute at a high level in Tuesday and Wednesday practice, and in their mind, it's just like the fourth quarter of the game. He gets his teams to be unconsciously competent. What that means, to me, is to be able to execute at a high level when pressure and adversity comes."

Grand Valley State athletic director Tim Selgo:

"You're going to get a highly intelligent head coach who is great at dealing with people. When you have that, along with someone who has proven he can win football games and get his players to compete at a high level, it's a pretty good mix. A friend of mine commented a couple of weeks ago while the regular season was going on that Brian's players play like they're on fire. They're going at a fast, high level. That's something you can expect out of his teams… Brian has a great personality. I think that would serve him very well. The last three head coaches they've had since Lou Holtz have not exactly been charismatic personalities. In my humble opinion, I think they need that now for recruiting purposes."

One of the most persuasive arguments for Kelly’s success, outside of his motivational ability, is his philosophy of execution over schemes. Here’s what Dr. Saturday said about him:

“Ultimately, this is basic stuff -- the Bearcats have added plenty of rollouts and play-action looks for the shorter, nimbler Collaros -- and the focus on Kelly (as with just about all other coaches) shouldn't be on whether he's a genius who has a chalkboard answer for everything you draw up, but instead on whether he gets the most from their players. Just about every guy who has lined up for Kelly in recent years has had success, and his teams have won consistently... and while he's a bright guy when it comes to Xs and Os, it has more to do with his ability to coach players and prepare teams in the details.”

Kelly, at least, has the building blocks for success:

• He focuses on motivating the kids.
• He focuses on execution.
• He focuses on out-working the opponent.
• He focuses on getting kids to play above their perceptions.
• He focuses on getting everyone to buy in.
• He focuses on putting kids in the right positions.
• He focuses on playing harder/longer (the viagra theory)
• He wins.

When we were evaluating coaches... seemed those are the things that all great coaches focus on. I realize Kelly has significant risk.

The key questions about Kelly are:

• Will he emphasize controlling the line of scrimmage?
• Will his pass first offense fly against a higher level of competition?
• Can he handle the pressure cooker of Notre Dame without turning defensive?
• Will his assistants be up to the task?
• Can he recruit?
• Will he be able to motivate prima donnas?
• Can he have as much success when he’s the target every week?

It is the greatest and hardest job in sports.

I’m not guaranteeing Kelly will take a seat in the pantheon of great Irish coaches, I do feel we’ve taken a big step beyond Charlie and Davieham. I doubt you will see teams dogging it on the field or in the weight room.

The building blocks are there… greatness has been thrust upon Kelly.

Irish faithful will watch closely to see if he’s up to the challenge.

** I was a few pints deep into the evening... the historical recounting of the USC game likely reflects that.

A Short Tale of Redemption

""I read this book when it first came out and it had a very powerful impact on me. Recently my daughter was going through a rough time and I thought this book would be just the ticket to help her and guess what? She called and thanked me after she read it and passed it to her sister who also got a lot out of it and she just gave it to her husband to read. It can have a pretty powerful impact on the young and the not so young."

""As a son, a father and now a grandfather I found ten secrets a truly inspiring book. I read it cover to cover within an hour. My only regret is that the book was much too short.":

""This book is one of the best that I have read. It is simple, meaningful and life changing. It was recommended to me by a priest as one of the best books that he has read. Not a religious book- but many positive, powerful thoughts."

Notre Dame Has Run Out Of Mulligans And Flyers

The last four coaching searches by Notre Dame have resulted in failure (one of them before the coach hired ever coached a game). That adds up to only one successful coach in the last 29 years - one successful hire out of the last 6 attempts going back to Gerry Faust. Notre Dame's brand and reputation have been degraded as a result. It is plain from fan interest, viewership and many other indicia that Notre Dame football has used up a lot of collateral and it is essential that this hire be a home run. Another failed coach and the program might not ever revive.

That is why the risk factor for acceptable candidates in this search must -- as a matter of prudence -- be low. A candidate who "might" succeed is not good enough now. A candidate with a short period of success or success not attained at a high level school or conference cannot be risked now. A candidate who has not had experiences sufficient to prepare him for the intense glare of a very high-profile program like Notre Dame is too big a risk now. A high-risk, high-reward candidate might be acceptable if Notre Dame had been a top-ten power for the past fifteen years. We would then have more margin for error, more collateral to play with. Unfortunately, we do not.

Accordingly, it was heartening to hear Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick articulate clear criteria for the next Notre Dame head coach; criteria unmistakably established to guarantee a low-risk, high percentage play through the hiring of a top-tier coach who has "been there, done that" and who will not be surprised or inexperienced in dealing with the intense pressure of a national program. In the words of Mr. Swarbrick:

"He must have shown the ability to build and sustain a Division One football team" and proven his ability to succeed "at the highest level."

This statement gives Notre Dame alumni a legitimate basis to be hopeful that Mr. Swarbrick is conducting the kind of search necessary to identify and sign a top-tier coach and end the pattern of botched searches.

Given Mr. Swarbrick's criteria, it is not difficult to determine which candidates meet the standard and which do not. It also is clear which candidates -- although they might be fine coaches -- are too big a risk for Notre Dame at this time.

One candidate who is frequently mentioned by the media and who falls into this category is Brian Kelly. He has not achieved sustained success "at the highest level." His three-year stint at Cincinnati deserves praise, but his performance there must be seen in the context of the weak competition he has played and the lack of top opponents on Cincinnati's schedule. Rich Rodriguez and Dan Hawkins each had three-year runs similar and better than Kelly's at Cincinnati when they were coaching at West Virginia and Boise State respectively. When they moved up to top-tier BCS conferences they proved not ready. That type of experience is the rule, not the exception when short-term high-flyers at lower level schools and conferences take on the top job at a traditional power.

Kelly has never coached at a top program either as an assistant or as a head coach. He has never been mentored by or coached with a top-level head coach. He has not recruited nationally or against top programs for elite recruits. In his entire career, Kelly has never coached on a staff that defeated one of the top twenty all-time Division 1 college programs in terms of either wins or winning percentage.

Successful Notre Dame coaches, such as Parseghian, Devine and Holtz had a record of major wins against major opponents before they ever coached at Notre Dame, including Woody Hayes, Joe Paterno, Bo Schembechler, Bud Wilkinson, Barry Switzer and Bob Devaney; multiple wins against teams such as Oklahoma, Alabama, Michigan, Ohio State, Texas, Penn State; years of testing against competition in the Big Ten, the Big Eight and the Southwest Conference. Each had been mentored by some of the elite football minds of the age such as Paul Brown, Biggie Munn, Duffy Daugherty and Woody Hayes. Each had been around big-time coaches and programs. That level of familiarity with and success against big-time competition and big-time programs is essential at this point. Brian Kelly can point to no such major wins against top teams or coaches, no experience at a top program to know what it is like and no familiarity or mentorship under a top coach.

Other coaches sometimes mentioned as being in contention suffer from a similar lack of readiness. Gary Patterson of TCU has done remarkable work this year and other years, but the level of competition his program faces is so far removed from that of Notre Dame that it would be a giant step to coaching on the big stage of Notre Dame football. Chris Peterson at Boise State has produced some terrific teams, and one memorable win over Oklahoma, but the level of competition that Boise State faces week in and week out and his relatively short stint there would make him an unacceptable risk.

None of this is meant to denigrate Brian Kelly or the others. Each is a good coach. At another time in the past, Kelly might have been an excellent choice for Notre Dame. He might even work out at Notre Dame. But playing the odds, one must conclude that right now, he would be an unacceptable risk given the unique combination of his current experience and the current state of Notre Dame football.

If Notre Dame hires Kelly, Patterson, Petersen or another head coach who does not meet Mr. Swarbrick's criteria, it will represent a failure. They do not meet the criteria laid out by Mr. Swarbrick of sustained excellence at the highest level. Notre Dame fans will be holding their collective breath as we "take a flyer" - again.

The failure to hire a coach that meets Mr. Swarbrick's criteria will have other consequences. Many ND alumni would not rally around the new coach, but would sigh "here we go again". It would be extremely disappointing, and it would exacerbate and even cement the malaise and detachment among alumni and the sense that Notre Dame is in a sad but irreversible decline.