Tuesday’s report by the Chicago Tribune made people fairly certain that Brian Kelly was going to become the next football coach at Notre Dame. When ESPN wasn’t too busy trying to out “TMZ” TMZ on the Tiger Woods story, they were running Joe Schad’s report that things between Kelly and the Irish were “heating up.”
Wednesday, there didn’t seem to be any sign that things heated up, cooled down, or blew up with Kelly. We know nothing. No Brian Kelly Twitter updates, no new leaks, no contract details. Action Jack has once again got things on lockdown.
But now news comes that Randy Edsall and the Irish have “mutual interest” in each other. Let’s just say that one didn’t go over too well with members of ND Nation.
Here’s a quick sampling:
Please for the love of god have the BOT inform Swarbrick and Jenkins that under no circumstances is Randy Etsal an acceptable hire for ND.”
“The Uconn coach would be the end of ND football. He is going to be a sub 500 coach after his bowl game. There are 20 other guys out there that are better than Randy.”
“Kelly deal has fallen through and we are on to Edsall. What a joke and I am not giving another dime to the Univeristy.”
“If this is true, it represents a total surrender by this administration of the football program to mediocrity.”
“I just read this clowns bio on wikipedia. ND hired a dude who didn’t get the AD jobs at IU & Stanford. Seriously.... I think deep down Swarbrick is a USC & Michigan fan.”
I could go on and on, but the gist of it is that people aren’t too fired up about Randy Edsall.
I’ve been hard on the guy, but he could very well be a football coach that could succeed at Notre Dame, but this hire would have to go down as an absolute FAIL for Swarbrick.
That said, there’s been plenty of rumors rolling through today, including a now “mystery candidate” that IrishSportsDaily’s Mike Frank is starting to dig into.
The situation with Kelly could very well have hit a snag, but I also believe that this is all part of negotiating. While Edsall doesn’t look like a home run hire, Swarbrick has to at least continue kicking the tires on vetted candidates while he hashes out the details with Kelly’s agent. If he didn’t, Swarbrick wouldn’t be doing his job.
FAVORITE THEORY OF THE DAY:
From irish73102:
As Lloyd Christmas would say, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance... Yeah!”
