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Imagine if Kelly was half as good with the 4 and 5* that have come through the program....

His strength of developing those unheralded 3 star players, and turning them into fine college football players was his biggest asset while he was at Cincinnati. This was a perfect setup for him, since he could thrive in a very weak Big East conference at that time.

He's now on the national stage, though, and what worked perfectly for him at Cincinnati isn't going to get us over the hump, which is being able to compete on an equal basis with the powerhouses of today (Alabama, Ohio State, LSU, Clemson). While it certainly has elevated our program to being a very good one (three 10+ win seasons in three years is pretty good), it's still not an upper echelon one.

Those guys can develop 4 and 5 star players quite nicely, and their ceiling tends to be higher than most of the 3 star players who were developed in the above manner. To put it bluntly, Trevor Lawrence and Ian Book are both well developed quarterbacks at this stage in their careers, but there's no doubt about who can carry a team much farther.

9 times out of 10, the "average" powerhouse team is going to beat us, where the best we can hope for under those circumstances, is to at least get a close loss.

Maybe 1 out of every 10 times, if we're on fire, and they come out flat, we can pull off an upset, but when you have to pull that many rabbits out of your hat throughout the season, you're not going to be that lucky.

Yes, I'm hoping that Clemson this year will be that 1 out of the 10 times for us, since on paper, they are certainly the significant favorites to win. If that were to happen, and we got to the playoffs, I wouldn't exactly feel too optimistic about our chances of pulling off two wins in a row against the best remaining teams in the nation.

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