Notre Dame gets right man for immense job

Charlie Weis with (head-coaching) substance.

An Urban Meyer mulligan.

After a hat trick of Bob Stoops' denials...

Will Brian Kelly turn around a Notre Dame team that finished 6-6 this year? (Getty Images)

Brian Kelly was the right, just and logical choice for Notre Dame. It was almost too easy. Kelly wanted Notre Dame, Notre Dame wanted Kelly. There isn't this much lust at a teenager's first middle-school dance.

A cocky, Irish-Catholic offensive genius from New England coming off a string of championships has joined the Irish family.

Gosh, where have we heard that before? Yes, that was Weis' description five years ago. His promise fizzled out mostly because he could call plays but didn't know how to run a program. Kelly's advantage is that he is a head coach. That's supposed to make the difference. Everything Kelly has touched has turned to a W, if not Super Bowl rings. So how do you compare a guy who helped win three NFL titles to a guy who just posted back-to-back Big East titles.

We'll see. Kelly, a Boston native, has the same swagger, the same confidence, the same get-out-of-my-way manner that accompanied Weis into that first news conference. Weis couldn't have known the true scope of what he was undertaking. Will Kelly?

We've been conditioned after every Notre Dame hire -- there have four now this decade -- to throw roses. This is Notre Dame so this must be the right guy. Actually, ND has taught us lately that skepticism should be the natural response.

Kelly is what Meyer was five years ago -- America's Next Top Model. Only at ND, perhaps, do you get a do over. Football is a game of inches. Football searches are sometimes a matter of flight plans. Back in 2004, Notre Dame's plane left the ground for Salt Lake City later than Florida's. This time, there wasn't any competition for Kelly.

That's a variation of a term ND should be familiar with: softening the schedule.

The official announcement of his hiring doesn't come until Friday. It should come loaded with one key question: Can anyone lead Notre Dame back to greatness?

Kelly is going to win the news conference, will he win enough games? Winning at Grand Valley State, Central Michigan, even Cincinnati is one thing. Chasing BCS bowls every year and winning a national championship every few years is something altogether different.

If you do it at Cincinnati, anytime, you're a hero. If you don't do it all the time at Notre Dame they start comparing you to Weis. Or Willingham. Or Davie.

Whether Kelly realizes the task or not, it will soon smack him in the face -- 9-3 isn't good enough. Maybe sometimes, certainly not all the time.

Look at his predecessors since Lou Holtz. Only George O’Leary is a sitting head coach -- in Conference USA. Bob Davie and Tyrone Willingham are out of coaching. Weis likely will pop up again as NFL coordinator but his head coaching credentials are damaged.

Lately, Notre Dame chews them up and spits them out. That, or the school, across multiple administrations, is making flawed decisions. Maybe both. In this case, the school has learned in some small way from its past mistakes. It hired the Parker head-hunting firm in Atlanta to vet candidates. O'Leary was a huge embarrassment. The school had to make sure that Kelly didn't have any skeletons, at least none boney enough to matter to the moral and ethical center of this Catholic flagship.

Of course it's a lot easier to overlook whether the new coach is pro-choice or not when you're in love.

The bunk about academic restrictions is just that. Notre Dame gets special admits just like Duke basketball gets special admits. It's not the number, it's what you do with them. Is anyone suggesting that Connecticut beat Notre Dame with a bunch of thugs? The best running back in the country is at Stanford taking 21 units this quarter. Toby Gerhart gets by on five or six hours of sleeps a night and still keeps up a 3.24 GPA.

It would be easier in a conference but Notre Dame isn't going to give up its independent status anytime soon. Even as the schedule has been softened, the program has seemed to play down to the competition. It has to be further troubling that in this age of parity, Notre Dame has been a victim, not one of the ruling class. In the 12-year history of the BCS, only 10 teams have been ranked No. 1 in the weekly standings and none of them from South Bend. If Texas beats Alabama next month, the decade will have been dominated by four teams with a pair of championships (LSU, USC and Florida are the others).

Why will Kelly succeed? Go back to the first line of this column. He has substance. The problem is that you can't touch, hear or smell substance. For now, fans will watch NBC for it, fans will pay season-ticket money to watch it and media will flock to South Bend to write about it.

The rest is up to the latest cocky, Irish-Catholic offensive genius from New England coming off a string of championships.