Although the NCAA has canceled all of their sports through the end of the academic year, there still will be conjecture as to who is the best coach in the NCAA. AP College Football writer Ralph Russo recently ranked his Top 25 coaches in the country.
My Top 25 coaches. Now @slmandel and @BruceFeldmanCFB can bust my chops. pic.twitter.com/NVEMLenAXR
— Ralph D. Russo (@ralphDrussoAP) March 14, 2020
The caveat here is that Russo does not rank first or second year coaches, otherwise the list would be somewhat different. Either way, to see Brian Kelly’s name along after Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney should make Notre Dame fan’s very happy about how high Russo is on the Irish’s leader.
Kelly in his tenure at Notre Dame is 71-37, and his total career record after previous stops at Grand Valley State, Central Michigan and Cincinnati is 242-93-2. There are 21 wins that don’t show up on Kelly’s career record that were vacated as well and if you add in those wins, his time in South Bend looks even better at 92-37, the losses in those seasons are added into his overall record.
When you look at the 92-37 record, Kelly sports a .718 winning percentage, which might not be exactly what Irish fans are looking for, but after a disastrous 2016, Kelly make drastic changes to his coaching staff. Those changes have resulted in three straight 10 win plus seasons, an appearance in the College Football Playoff and Top 15 finishes in each year. Those are the kind of results most Notre Dame fans expect, and if Kelly can continue his recent trend of winning at a high level, Irish fans will be extremely pleased.