I’ll never forget attending the 2005 football banquet. I had just witnessed a total transformation in Notre Dame football: a near upset of USC, a BCS birth, and confidence from the entire team bursting through that 2006 was going to be a title run. It was quite a far cry from the team I had started working with under Ty to say the least.
To add to my excitement, the guest speaker was none other than Lou Holtz. Lou preformed just as you would expect, fantastic, excited about ND football and its bright future. During that speech, he uttered the following quote that has stuck with me ever since:
“Be careful about that light at the end of the tunnel–it could be an oncoming train.”
Little did I know then, Dr. Lou was a prophet. No more than two years later, our BCS birth joy and national title hopes came crashing down to earth in the form of a 3-9 season that included losses to two service academies. The oncoming train ran us over while we were gleefully sprinting towards it.
Frustration has been the overall theme of Notre Dame football ever since Bob Davie took over in 1997. For every good Irish moment, there seems to be multiple depressing ones that overshadow it. It’s no wonder that parts of our fanbase readily call for the coach’s head these days–no one wants to be run over by that damned train again. Even if some parts of the fanbase, myself included, aren’t yet quite ready to sharpen the pitchforks to run Kelly out of town, we sense this inevitable feeling that any progress is fleeting and the other shoe will soon drop.
So just how bad has it been? I took every game since 1997 and plotted the margin of victory or loss, grouping them by year:
While the overall trend has been moving upwards, especially in the last 3 years, it is hard to be overly optimistic about the last 15 years as a whole.
Until 2009, our seasons where marred by being on the wrong end of absolute beatings in the 20-40 point range. The only exceptions to this trend were Davie’s first year in 1997 and Weis’ first year in 2005; in fact, 2005 was our best year overall during that time with two 3 point losses (Sparty & Southern Cal) and a 14 point loss against the Buckeyes in the Fiesta Bowl. While 2005 provided us with all the hype and hope in the world, the writing starting making its first true appearance on the wall as the Irish reverted right back to the huge losses the following season.
The past three seasons are even more frustrating. Only one loss cracked the 20 point range in which a red-hot Stanford dominated the Irish 37-14 early in 2010, Brian Kelly’s first year. The year prior, Weis’ squad found absolutely uncanny ways to lose with their worst losses only being a 7 point deficit to both Southern Cal and Stanford. Of course, last season’s turnover-prone squad found themselves on the wrong end of close games three times, with only Stanford and Southern Cal having anything resembling a solid victory.
While Southern Cal and Stanford have been a constant thorn in our side the past few years, we shouldn’t overlook the maddening case of Michigan. The past three years have netted the same result: a loss by 4 points. Losing these close games are bad enough, but having it happen time and time again to a hated opponent? Brutal.
Granted all of this data isn’t awful. There are some highlights in 2005 and 2006 with several 20+ point victories. Thus far, Brian Kelly has also moved the margin of victory up higher and higher towards the positive end as well.
However, it is impossible to look objectively and honestly at this data and not see why a black cloud tends to hover over Notre Dame football and its fans. While the final score isn’t the end-all-be-all of statistical analysis, it is easily the one that has the biggest impact and leaves the longest lasting impression in the mind of any fan. Unfortunately, when you have over a decade of such memories to overcome, it takes more than a couple seasons of potential to heal those wounds.
- Epilogue - January 3, 2022
- HLS Podcast Finale - January 2, 2022
- The Final Fiesta: Notre Dame vs Oklahoma State NCAA ’14 Sim - December 31, 2021
Terry
Tex – I think you’re overanalyzing. Coach Kelly’s 1 name is Brian, NOT Brain.
Stanford 2010 – Stanford humiliated us on OUR turf while their coach Harbaugh stood on the sideline egging them on. This would be a good year to pay them back, keeping in mind that there is the small matter of 2 years of interest that has been accumulating.
I have been harping about a ‘turnaround’ game, aka a ‘signature’ game. I think it is coming. Sending Stanford back to sunny California with their tails between their legs would be nice.
it can be done.
NDtex
Thanks for the catch…dyslexia is fun!
I’m with you on the true signature win. For me though, I think the big signature win would be taking out either Michigan or Southern Cal by a nice, fat margin.
Don’t get me wrong, a Stanford win would be great, but they just lost their best weapon. A Luck-less Cardinal is a completely different team.
sam gerardi
I gotta say it; first ND’s answer for a football coach is pathetic… Geo Kelly started the ball rolling when he screwed over Tommy Clements – was it an atack on my people??? Now we hav a dude who as I refer to Brian “they call me cioach” Kelly… at the signing i thought it would be nice to welcome him into our family as coach Kellini… his desire to be on national tv the who game, holding that damn play card with two young men onhis side giving them a play to send in , 20 minutes each play of highlighted tv… fist, the play card belongsin the press box with the offensive coordinator and dig bat show manage the game! and his sideline temper tantrums are a total disgrace and dig bat Jenkins does not address the problem or acknowledge concern (as he does got give a damn about any alumni concerns)… if i designed an offense, i would not be staring at a pice of wood pulp on a third/fourth and one – a play versus the week study of the opponent would be firm… let’s switch to 12-1 (12-2, 12-3… 12-6,7) Sweet lips Tommy. He could not make the lower Div schools that I observed during their post season playoffs… he has never offered the reason why he screwed over Dayne. We on the left coast analyzed every game… the pathetic promformance against Pitt (and “our man praised him for the 4th quarter “DRIVE” – 33 minutes of offense and dig bat got a td… check out BC, WF, Stanford…. how could he ever start 12-1 against FSU… that Stanford gutless – “don’t touch me” example of ND football is the worst in history… and we ended up with no offensive td’s… spring ball – why was he given snaps instead of giving Golson and Kiel the work? – Hell, he already established that Hendrix was not the answer.. as a Leahy’s lad, not much fikm but observe the MASTER on the sideline with Captain Blythe (Joe McArdle in the top of score board with biniculars phoning down the sets and – get this – the splits. We are all (including the 2012 team, watching our man at KU… the ad and bk should take the same bus out of town.. Gerardi Leahy’s Lad
Trey
Holy Spell Check, Batman!
a68domer
Hope “Springs” eternal. Every year about this time us alumns/fans just “know” that this will be the year. Other than a couple of defections, there is nothing to dampen our spirits this year, yet. This should be the year we conquer the Cardinal at home and the Condoms in their home! The rest are just warmups – here’s HOPEing.
GO IRISH!!
Ripple
It would be interesting to see the same graph with two colors, green for teams that we we’re supposed to beat soundly (navy, wake, purdue, byu, etc.) and red for teams that we’d like to beat but expect a good game from (usc, mich, mich st, stanford, etc.) – using either the pre-game line, or fans’ expectations as a barometer, or both. I think you’d be struck by how many green dos appear below the line and how few red dots appear above the line. In other words, the problems have been two-fold – too many losses to teams we should beat soundly and too few comfortable victories against our rivals – both signs of a mid-tier, top 50 team.
NDtex
I actually thought about doing this, but I decided against it. The problem ended up being that any data would be far too subjective from what I had available.
Rankings and even the level our rivals teams play at fluctuate far too much. 2005 is a prime example with Michigan. It was a close win on the road to a rival that wasn’t only ranked, but a title favorite. Michigan though, ended that season 7-5 and a loss in the Alamo Bowl.
Even Vegas lines are bad, especially in ND’s case. ND typically gets a lot of homer bets, which causes the house to push the lines heavier in our favor. Any other popular or successful team will get the same treatment as well. The goal of the spread isn’t a 100% attempt to predict the score, it’s to try and keep the odds in the house’s favor. Again, far too subjective of a metric.
And fan’s expectations…yeah, not even going to try and quantify that.
The bottom line was to keep this data as objective as possible to get an overall picture of the program the past 15 years. There is plenty to be depressed about without me fiddling with subjective data to make it worse.
Joe Schulz
I like the approach but would have preferred a curved trend line showing that the last few years are “generally” an upswing over the previous ten. I also agree with the comments regarding teams we should beat easily vs. tough opponents. Really good team CRUSH their weaker opponents and GO TO WAR with the better ones. They, like the Bulls when Jordan was there, NEVER MAIL IT IN!
With our current offensive line I expect this year’s team to beat a lot of opponents into submission. I can live with a few fumbles as long as we kick the crap out of them on the line of scrimmage.
Steve in Iowa
Great article. It’s a nice way to analyze what has been going on. Just as a suggestion you might want to consider presenting the data in the chart with box-plots for each season. It would make it less busy and give info on median, quartiles and outliers. But good work, anyway.
FightingSonOfNotreDame
Tex – For nostalgia’s sake (not that we need to be living in the past any more than we usually do) can you run that same analysis for Holtz’s era? I bet it’s damn good. People don’t realize how good his record was year over year not to mention the fact that he legitimately wone 2 NC’s which should be unquestioned and arguably 3.
I remember being in my dorm room when they replaced him with Davies and I was outnumbered 5 to 1 as this being one of the biggest mistakes ND’s made in a long time. Of course I had no idea how bad of an era it would start. The arguments at the time from the peanut gallery were ridiculous “Davie will bring us into a modern era of college football”, “He runs practices up tempo with rock music like an SEC team”.
Little did we know.
Anyway, I am confident Kelly is the right man for the job.
Trey
Maybe add an overlay that has the recruiting ranking from 3 and 4 years before. That’s probably your best indicator of how good a team was “supposed” to be.
Geoffrey '73
It was not exciting being an Irish supporter during the Davie and Willingham years. Weis began to restore the spirit and Kelly has begun to restore expectations. I have no doubt that the 3rd Kelly season will be better than the 3rd Davie, Willingham and Weis seasons.