Why Brian Kelly and the Bucs might consider each other

Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly's name has come up in connection with the Bucs' coaching search. Our Rick Stroud reports that the Bucs "don't appear to be focused on Kelly."

Let's ignore the silliness of the silly season for a moment. Let's just look at why it would make sense for Kelly to consider the Bucs (or another NFL team), and why Tampa Bay might at least consider Kelly.

Brian Kelly is a good coach.

It's easy to look past that now, just after Clemson destroyed his Fighting Irish 30-3 in the Cotton Bowl. But Kelly is good. In nine seasons at Notre Dame, he's 81-35. In the nine years before his arrival, Notre Dame was 61-49. Kelly has taken the Irish to College Football Playoff once, the BCS national title game and a Fiesta Bowl. He has also has reached double-digit wins four times … or as many times as the Irish hit that mark from 1992-2009 combined. He also had a 12-0 season at Cincinnati and won two national titles at Grand Valley State. Kelly won national coach of the year honors in 2012 and won the Dodd Trophy as the nation's top coach this season.

This might be as good as it gets for Kelly.

Notre Dame obviously has a lot of things going for it (money, the NBC deal, a huge name and rich tradition). But it also has some major, unfixable hurdles to winning a national title. That, to me, makes Kelly's success even more impressive. This year, he took a lot of good players and made them play at a very-good level, where their sum was greater than their individual parts. He had to do that, because I'm not sure the Irish can recruit at an elite level because of the program's location and lofty academic standards. And if Notre Dame can't recruit at the level of Alabama or Clemson, it'll be almost impossible to beat one of them in the playoff … let alone beating both of them back-to-back. So maybe a 12-0 season and first-round playoff exit is the ceiling for Kelly at Notre Dame. I'm not saying a national title is impossible. But I do think he would be wise to take a step back to see how feasible it is, especially because…

Notre Dame is a really hard job.

The academics, booster culture and pressure are unique at Notre Dame. Coaches age in dog years up there, and Kelly endured nine seasons. Lou Holtz, Frank Leahy and Ara Parseghian all lasted 11. There aren't many programs of Notre Dame's caliber, and those jobs rarely open. So if Kelly wanted to go somewhere else to restart his clock, it'd probably be a step down. Unless he tried to take a step up to the NFL.