I just read an article from the USA Today, liberal rag that it is, and it listed the top 50 college players going into the draft.
Alabama has numbers 3,5,6,9,20,30,43
Ohio State has 1,4,49
LSU has 2,15,17,21,22,33,36
Clemson has 7,22,38,46
Oklahoma has 8,39
Georgia has 7,26
Ped State has 35,40
for crying out loud lowa has 16,34
Wisconsin has 25,47
TCU, has 37, 44
Utah has 31, 50
Auburn, South Carolina, Louisville, Oregon, Houston, Colorado, California, Arizona State, Baylor, USC, TCU, Utah State, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri each have one player. Where is Notre Dame? To me this proves that Brian Kelly is a damn good coach because our talent though good, is not overwhelming. Notice this excludes the great Trevor Lawrence for Clemson because he is not eligible yet. Also it does not include the QB from Oklahoma who had won a championship with Alabama, and the QB from Georgia who is highly touted, or the QB from Ohio State who was superb all year and get beat you soundly with his arm and legs. A superbly talented QB like Lawrence makes a huge difference and others who the system suits well or have great athletic ability makes a big difference too.
So Brian Kelly has done a remarkable job developing players that were not that highly rated and getting to the NFL, and sticking for more than the 4 year career that is the NFL standard for achieving what each player hopes to get at the least. As of now we are probably in the top 8 of college programs and have a legitimate shot at making the playoffs without having off the chart recruits, many of which are eliminated from the start because they don't have the academics, or come from a household where the degree is not valued or cherished. It also says to me that team chemistry though a strong contributing factor for getting to the playoffs, is trumped by talent in winning a championship. A championship can be won when the chemistry overrides the talent, as last year in NCAA basketball, Virginia was damn lucky in four of their wins, did not have the most talent, and in fact because of that lack of talent almost got knocked each of those in four games. It takes luck and teamwork but mostly top talent on those rare occasions that you have a bad day, to win the championship. The chemistry effect occurs only occasionally. Under Holtz we were ranked number 1 in recruiting and very high in many of the others, yet only came away with one championship. Yes we were in the running in two more years and if playoffs existed then, we probably would have been in them in maybe 4 of Holtz's years. But my conclusion is that we are pretty damn lucky to have Brian Kelly.