It has taken a decade, but ND Football is now finally in an enviable position:
We (that’s right “we”) have top flight assistants - I wouldn’t trade our DC for anyone not named Venables, and across the board, we have top tier coaches who are both good at their job and good at recruiting
We have top flight facilities - the whiners at NDN won’t admit it, but the changes brought about by Swarbrick and Kelly have been a huge success and major improvement. We are the Fighting Irish, not the Fighitn Amish, and we successfully transitioned into the next century.
Kelly himself has learned to adapt (to a degree). He finally replaced some of his longtime friends who followed him from from Cincinnati with competent assistants, and he has grudgingly over time learned to hand over most of the control of the offense and defense.
Now, was it worth it? Tulsa was an event worthy of termination. So was Clemson in the hurricane and Northwestern and Louisville. The 2012 bowl prep was a mess, and the whole 2016 season was also worthy of being fired. Further, Kelly’s daliance with the Eagles on the day after getting his ass kicked in 2012 was pathetic. The Declan Sullivan incident was a horrible accident that could have been prevented with some common sense, and while unintentional, the legal minded defensive response of the AD and Coach was very disappointing.
(I purposely left out the vacated wins because that was purely NCAA political bullshit).
So basically, Kelly has achieved a good position finally, but he did so by “The Groundhog Day Method”.
Any other coach in any other program would have been fired several times by the time Kelly was able to find his way. By a trial and error method almost as patient as evolution, he has created a program that is in great, but still not perfect position.
So would you trade him for anything short of a top 4 coach now? While he has had patience not afforded to other coaches, “he is where he is” now. ND has paid a high price though.
I do know three things from this last ND Football decade: 1)Brian Kelly should be saying a prayer of thanks that he ended up at ND every single day, 2) ND should have no trouble hiring it’s next high profile coach given the patience that it has demonstrated, and 3) the Sullivan Family set a bar for love, forgiveness, and class that should leave us all humbled.