Getty Images A look back at the data from Brian Kelly’s 3rd season as head coach of Notre Dame football. We’ve some to the end of our evaluation journey. It’s a path that’s been characterized some highs and lows, from both data and memory perspectives. Fortunately, we get to close everything out on a high note**. Brian Kelly’s third outing as head coach of the Irish football program was the 2012 season. That season marked Kelly’s 25% point in his twelve season career in South Bend. Kelly teams finished both the 2010 and 2011 seasons 8-5, as well as bowl game appearances. The 2010 Sun Bowl ended with a 33-17 Notre Dame victory over Miami (FL). In 2011, the Irish lost their Champs Bowl matchup, 14-18, against Florida State. The 2012 team ended up going 12-1, with an undefeated regular season. 
The biggest win margins came against the Navy season opener (+40) and Miami (FL) & Wake Forest (both +38). One of the most defining features of 2012 was how many games came down to the wire. Overall, the Irish won their regular season games by an average differential of +16 points. When you remove the three blowouts, that average drops to +6.7. 
At the end of that amazing, though not always pretty, regular season run Notre Dame earned a National Championship berth. And if you go back to the last sentence in this article’s opening paragraph, that’s also when the asterisks start coming into play Asterisk 1: The 2012 season was the second to last year in the BCS period and the events that led to the Irish being selected for the Championship game were a prime case study for all the good and bad features of the “computer” era. It was also my senior season and my therapy bill for coming to terms with it all are still adding up so I won’t go into too much detail here. The 2012 BCS championship game ended in an indisputable rout, 14-14, at the hands of the Crimson Tide. While that soured things in the short term, the worst came later. Asterisk 2: In February of 2018, an NCAA appeals committee wrote in stone that all of Notre Dame’s records from the 2012 season would be vacated. So if we really want to get existential, this article is a work of fiction. For some reason that seems like an incredibly appropriate way to end this series and enter into my next round of therapy to heal some of these wounds. I’m taking any and all donations towards that fund and hoping that Marcus Freeman’s third season as head coach won’t pile on too much negative baggage. Cheers and Go Irish!! Source: https://www.onefootdown.com/2024/7/2/24 ... date-irish