Turning a ship around is a long and arduous task. It takes time to get the vessel corrected. After Charlie Weis left the Notre Dame program, it had all the tools to head in the right direction, but the helm was turned the wrong way. Jack Swarbrick, Notre Dame’s Athletic Director, was charged with the […]

Part 3 of this series of articles will cover the effects that performance in close games and game day management, preparation, and execution have on a program, and how these areas have affected Notre Dame. Part 2 focused on scheduling and the benefit that playing home games while Part 1 focused on recruiting and player […]

The Brian Kelly Era begins Saturday with the home opener against annual foe Purdue. After an off-season spent parsing coaching comments, grasping at limited practice footage, and discussing the positives/negatives of the Blue-Gold game, Irish fans will finally be able to evaluate their new head coach. If Kelly is to meet fans’ expectations, he needs to get […]

September 4th marks the debut of the Brian Kelly era in South Bend. For the fourth time since 1997 Notre Dame has a new coach, and, once again, Irish fans are wondering if he can lead them back to prominence and succeed where his three predecessors failed. To be certain, Kelly brings with him many […]

Part 2 of this series of articles will cover the effects of scheduling and the benefit that playing home games have on a program, and how these areas have affected Notre Dame. While Part 1 focused on the player impact on a program, recruiting and development—something the coach and his staff have greater control over—this […]

I originally came up with the idea of creating “five-year profiles” because I wanted to evaluate the entire Charlie Weis period at Notre Dame on a scale relative to the rest of college football. The thought was that if we could create a snapshot of what the last five seasons (2005-2009) looked like at ND […]

Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a five-part series detailing the blueprint for winning the BCS national championship and measuring the Irish performance against this standard. As Irish fans know all too well, Notre Dame hasn’t been part of the national title picture for over a decade. The last year the lads in […]

Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment of a five-part series detailing the blueprint for winning the BCS national championship and measuring the Irish performance against this standard. As the offensive and defensive results indicate, there is certainly a blueprint for winning a BCS national championship. The overwhelming majority of the last 10 champions performed […]

Editor’s note: This is the third installment of a five-part series detailing the blueprint for winning the BCS national championship and measuring the Irish performance against this standard. What is the defensive recipe for winning the BCS national championship? The aforementioned approach has been used to parse the data and identify the statistical metrics common […]

Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a five-part series detailing the blueprint for winning the BCS national championship and measuring the Irish performance against this standard. Offensively, what does it take to win the BCS national championship? The data below outlines the statistical metrics that answer this question via the approach described in […]