Kelly 3.0. Not that Kelly 3.0 will make any excuses...
I almost don't give a shit anymore.
It's obvious Kelly doesn't. If he gave two shits, he wouldn't have a class that will likely finish outside the top 15. I'm betting it won't even make top 20.
That is what he gets for hiring shit assistants that can't recruit and cover for his own recruiting shortcomings. He always takes the path of least resistance when hiring.
The only thing I really look forward to when it comes to ND football is the day both Swarbrick and Kelly are no longer there. Fuck them both.
But then again, how could it have been?
Historical data suggests Kelly was not going to deliver a top class.
There’s simply no momentum in the program. Not a single game-changer event that would create that momentum - a new head coach, an inspired coordinator or stud position coach/recruiter hire, a signature win that shows ND is among the elite, a Heisman trophy finalist, nothing.
The market is not buying the "33-6" mantra that ND and it's PR outlets are shouting from the mountaintops.
A once proud football program now about nothing much in the greatness and excitement categories.
as there were not the normal summer camps, team camps, etc. that schools and sites were able to hold. Many of these camps led to major and mid major conference offers and increased the star ratings of a lot of prospects.
Now, a place like ND should have been involved in recruiting prospects at their level for quite some time, and perhaps not a ton of kids would earn a late offer to ND (whom I assume is probably close to full by this point).
As to your last question about Jack holding off on announcing Kelly's extension, I really doubt it. I don't think that he really gives a fuck about football recruiting, to be honest. If stuff goes bad, he'll just make some excuse and trot out Jack Nolan or one of the usual suspects from the homer recruiting sites to do an "interview" (if he's even around any longer).
not sure what is going on there.
on recruiting...although he gave a great bit of lip service about how ND can recruit at an elite "top 5 level"...that'll buy him three more years at least
a 3-star OL. And lost their stud WR commit (#66 overall).
So they've actually gone BACKWARD in recruiting on the offensive side of the ball since October. That's virtually impossible to do.
The problem is that ND was never a serious leader for any of the top recruits in the country when Covid hit in March. None of the top TEs, WRs, OL were likely to land at ND. Not Will Shipley, the only RB prospect Lance Taylor bothered to recruit.
Same on the defensive side. Elston landed two lower-rated DEs and then rushed to offer a stud DE (Dallas Turner) only after one of committed DEs was likely to decommit. Fat and happy on 2 projects. No effort to sign a second DT.
LB, CB, S - ND was not a serious leader or even contender for any of the top prospects.