Clemson Is A Measuring Stick Game For Notre Dame, Like It Or Not

Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly seemed frustrated and surprised that the media covering his program viewed the upcoming matchup against the No. 1 Clemson Tigers as anything other than what it is, a huge game for Notre Dame.

I have some thoughts on Kelly's comments today, and his constant unwillingness to embrace that moments like this are why you come to Notre Dame, both as a coach and a player. It is games like this, and moments like this, on which your legacy is built.

Here are my thoughts:

When asked about this being a measuring stick game by Lou Somogyi of Blue & Gold Illustrated, Kelly pushed back and criticized Somogyi, unnecessarily so. What was the point of his contentious response to Somogyi? Does he not believe this is a measuring stick game for his program?

Beyond the unnecessary condescension towards Somogyi, the kindest, most respected man in the Notre Dame media, Kelly completely misses the boat of what it means to be at Notre Dame by his unwillingness to embrace this kind of moment.

Kelly likes to point to the 33-6 record from 2017-19, and now his new number is 29-3. He doesn't address the fact that Notre Dame is 1-3 in its last four meetings against teams that finished ranked.

Here is part of what Kelly said today, and what I commented on in the video:

“This game, it’s not the end all for us. For us, we could win this game, but if you lose to BC this game doesn’t mean anything. We’re still in pursuit of a conference championship. It’s about steady play, it’s about raising your level of compete on Saturdays ….

“It’s about consistency in performance, certainly we’re well on our way to checking that box. We’ve shown an incredible consistency as a football team of winning week in and week out.”

Kelly later talked about how his program can't "empty the tank" this week against Clemson:

“Look, you’re going to get opportunities like this and you want to win these games, there’s no doubt. But we can’t be overly emotional about this football game and lose site of the fact we’ve got 5 more games to play as well. There’s a lot of football still left out. We can’t empty the tank and say, 'Hey, we beat Clemson, we’ve arrived … no we haven’t.' We’ve got to take this game as an important game, it’s the NO. 1 team in the country, you better play really well against a really good Clemson football team and then get ready to move on and play a BC team on the road that’s really good too.”

Kelly is correct, his program won't "arrive" simply by beating Clemson, but his program also will never arrive if he doesn't starting winning games like this. This is the first hurdle towards that arrival, which Notre Dame fans have waited for now going on 11 seasons. And emptying the tank, and putting everything you have into these games, is absolutely how you win them.

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