We are approaching the half-year anniversary of a group of fans and alumni publishing two memorable advertisements in The Observer, Notre Dame’s student-run newspaper.
When they were released we laughed, we cried, and we laughed some more. Today, we are going to look back at the wild times that provided the world with one of the most hilarious sports “protests” campaigns of this century.
Notre Dame’s season ended on Saturday, November 26th in the L.A. Coliseum and almost immediately the rumors of Brian Kelly’s imminent departure from South Bend ratcheted up in the media. Although these rumors were pretty weak as far as these things go (Notre Dame and Brian Kelly working together to find a soft landing among the most fantastical of them) the anticipation of major change rose quickly under the dome.
One could argue the anticipation was purposely heightened in order to manufacture more outrage for the future, a common tactic for disgruntled groups.
In the middle of the season Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick gave Kelly a vote of confidence but did not speak publicly about the disastrous season as the campaign winded down. On Friday, December 2nd the athletic director finally broke his silence during his radio show and it was the spark that ignited dreams of a revolution.
Among the many comments that drew ire were that Kelly would return as head coach, that Swarbrick didn’t evaluate based on one year, that Kelly wasn’t held responsible for the NCAA probation placed on the program, and for having the gall to pronounce that the 2015 season was one of the best coaching jobs he’d ever seen.
If it hadn’t happened already, Swarbrick’s mug was now atop the angry fan dart board. A mere 5 days later on December 7th a full page advertisement was placed in The Observer. The ad showed an unflattering picture of Brian Kelly but mentioned Jack Swarbrick’s name 3 times to just once for Kelly.
Denial of accountability, truly the last straw.
The ad makers wanted to send a stern message and instead had people rolling on the floor in tears as memes instantly sprung up organically. Yes, the revolution began with a whimper. They might as well have paid for an ad that said, “DON’T TAKE US SERIOUSLY, PLEASE.” To try and take advantage of the momentum (or was it establish some momentum?) another new ad was taken out in the same newspaper just 4 days later.
Now that 6 months have passed we’re here to review the 3 main reasons these ads failed miserably.
Medium and Origin
If you didn’t know where this ad came from or weren’t blessed to see its hurried formation happen in real time the source wouldn’t have been too difficult to guess. In the waning days of the year 2016 the preferred choice of protest was a pair of ads in a newspaper with the circulation the size of a small town. The selection of this specific medium in and of itself meant the revolution would sputter and be ridiculed from the start.
Choosing a newspaper ad would be like Notre Dame trying to improve the strength & conditioning program by setting up a rusty Nordictrack outside of the Gug.
Newspaper ads & Nordictracks = making ND better
The ads came from an insular community drenched in years of being an echo chamber that such tone deafness and childishness became the story instead of their purported cause. And I use cause extremely lightly.
Petulance
Initially, this first round of advertisements were supposed to be just that, the beginning of a movement. Thousands of dollars were raised–tens of thousands of dollars even! Were billboards on the horizon? Perhaps airplane signs? There was room in the budget for protests during National Signing Day, the Blue-Gold Game, and beyond.
Then, everything fizzled.
They did try to branch outside of their comfort zone for further reach, bless their hearts. The day before the second advertisement was published a Twitter account was created to broaden the message. As if you couldn’t write the script more spectacularly the very first tweet features a plea for more info at a Frankenstein half website, half email address.
#fightforexcellence with us by supporting our call for change! Visit [email protected] for more information
— Fight For Excellence (@Fight4xce11ence) December 11, 2016
How long do you think they looked up on how to delete a tweet? Did they know it was possible?
Fight for Excellence has tweeted a total of 23 times and has not had an original tweet since December 13, 2016 with zero activity during 2017. Who knew the fight for excellence would only need 3 days?
If that wasn’t good enough a Fire Swarbrick Twitter account was created with accompanied informative website. Created on New Year’s Eve this one lasted 12 whole days before giving up.
People don’t respect things that are hastily put together, embarrassingly credulous, and most importantly lacking in passion. They want you to believe all of these amateurish things about the football program and yet operate in an even more incompetent manner.
You Can’t Argue the Facts!
Some people were bothered by the anonymity of the ads but they weren’t really anonymous. The first ad was completely anonymous in print while the second went under the name of a single poor schlub with an email address for “media inquiries.”
The ads were a message board temper tantrum vomited up onto a student newspaper with no path for future attention, except for more of the same uncontrolled, raging outbursts.
Some have tried to step in and say, “Well, set aside the way the info was disseminated you can’t argue with the facts presented.”
Of course, the facts were never the point. The ads were never meant to truly inform people. Anyone who is reading these words right now learned absolutely nothing from the ads. No one who works at Notre Dame woke up and finally learned Brian Kelly hadn’t won a major bowl game because of the ads.
One ad was not enough.
Did the ad makers believe the students would be called to action and just needed a nudge? Aren’t the students today smarter than ever, though? In this vein, the ads were the very definition of too clever by half.
The ads were meant to embarrass Notre Dame and be a lovely bit of chest pounding for some fans. These goals failed as the embarrassment turned toward the ad makers. It’s not about the facts because literally anyone with critical thinking skills could see this belly flop coming from miles away.
If it was really about facts there’d only be 2 sets of people:
1) Those who wanted mass firings and supported the ads
2) Those who didn’t want firings and didn’t support the ads.
When you’re coming from an echo chamber that is the worldview and when that worldview is exposed to something outside your bubble you end up with these out of touch and myopic ads. Right now if someone from the ad makers is reading this all they see is support for Kelly & Swarbrick.
Dealing in absolutes is the only move to make at this point and it’s another common tactic for the ad makers to keep their sanctimonious echo chamber impenetrable from reality.
The fundamental flaw in all of this is that you can’t stand on a high horse shaking your finger at something that you think is awful and turn around and promote something so ridiculous and amateurish, plus top it off with terrible follow up and a lack of passion.
It was bad enough Notre Dame went 4-8 but these ads took the hardest L this off-season.
Shots Fired!
Pew pew.
Ha! Looks like one of those shots found its way into a certain soft underbelly. I think we can confidently state he has 18 Stripes bookmarked on his computer. Check the recent thread on Stoops.
Interesting to look back on – a few thoughts:
1) A few people have commented on this before, but the inconsistency and clear cherry picking of stats (record vs top 12 over past four seasons?!?) undermines credibility where frankly it isn’t needed.
2) The sudden turn on Swarbrick when he made clear he was keeping BK (which wasn’t really surprising) was crazy to watch. Very quickly he went from a seemingly good approval rating to a sworn enemy of greatness who picked a fight with them with his comments (which he later did by mocking the Observer ad, but initially that never seemed to be his intention although it was construed that way by the “BK must go and anything else is indefensible” crew.
3) and to me, the most disheartening is that an ND group would turn on their own over this. The “unremarkable” reference to Declan Sullivan is in incredibly poor taste, but who cares if it scores cheap points against “enemies” like JS and BK. Likewise the BK comments about the academic scandal weren’t the right answer, but choosing to use that issue for evidence feels like a back stab when all public facts suggest neither had knowledge of the academic issues (and we should be confused/directing anger at the NCAA’s insane inconsistency instead).
To Eric’s last point, the “if you’re not with us you’re the enemy” stance turned pretty ugly. From what I heard guys like Jack Nolan, Pete Sampson, or anyone who offers any counter argument is subject to ad hominem attacks and mockery. For a group that supposedly stands for Notre Dame’s values and reputation that’s really the depressing piece – there’s a loss of conscience that some (not all) have shown in a desire to push their agenda.
I edited out a paragraph on Declan. But a couple points on that.
The continued use of that tragedy to say vile things about Kelly & Swarbrick is flat out disrespectful and an appalling attitude toward Declan’s family. It’s just unbelievably poor taste. I can’t even imagine what his family would think if they read some of the comments that were made just days ago.
Two, the trio of quotes in the ad pretty much summarize how this was just a project by a message board to make themselves feel better and high five each other. You need a lot of context to make sense of them, which the average fan doesn’t have all the time, and it’s like their little inside jokes to each other. Pretty stupid.
Old people, man.
And to Eric’s point: I thought they should get rid of Kelly, and I thought then and probably think now that they made a mistake in keeping him (though offseason developments and the general tenor around the program at the moment have made me less certain of my position). However, I view those ads as a complete joke, for basically self-evident reasons.
Guess that makes me a Kellylover.
Thank you. I’ve said since the ad came out that possibly the worst part of it was that their frustration is completely justifiable at a macro level, and that there’s a fair conversation to be had about most of – definitely not all, but most of – the points that ad made in its ham-fisted way. The execution was so, so awful though, from the 1995 PowerPoint design to the factual inaccuracies (there are some, but I won’t bother with them here), to the blatantly obviously cherry-picked stats, to the lack of attribution and call to action, to the six-year-old (and not repeated since) purple-faced Kelly picture, to the co-opting of Declan Sullivan’s years-earlier death for football purposes, that the ad effectively killed any chance of anyone taking their legitimate arguments seriously.
A thoroughly regrettable effort.
You guys mentioned Declan a couple of times. Do not see him in the ad, or is there some TOS code word that references him?
The “unremarkable” part is from Swarbrick’s comments following the death of Declan during his press conference. That’s why I was saying it’s too inside baseball for many.
Thanks, I didn’t realize it either. That’s just repulsive. Looking at it now, I’m surprised they showed that much restraint to make a reference to that situation without tactlessly mentioning it directly. Might as well have considering the rest of that debacle of an ad.
As E said… I don’t remember now if it was a presser or in a deposition, but at the time Swarbrick said he thought the wind that day was “unremarkable.” It was a sloppy and painfully obvious CYA attempt, as the wind was off the charts bad and it was all over TV and social media. One of the guys on NDN who is an actual attorney said back then that Swarbrick should’ve been fired for that remark, which is not an indefensible position. I’ve seen other attorney alums opine the same in other venues.
Sitting on that opinion for six years, though, and dredging it up when the football team has a bad season in an attempt to get him fired – that’s an utterly indefensible position.
Brendan, this has always been a subject that has bothered me, but for a different reason than you might expect. I disagree with your characterization of the winds that day and Jack’s comments about it. Yes. It was windy, but not “off the charts,'” especially not for most of the day. The average wind speed that day was about 22 mph, what the national weather service calls “breezy.” (Above 25 is called “windy.”) Thats where they had been for most of the day. Then, there was a sudden increase to 33, with a gust of 53 mph. That is likely the gust that knocked over the lift and is the number that is always reported in the media from that day. But it is misleading because it had not been like that all day. Was it breezy, or even windy? Sure, but until that gust is was not something that you would necessarily notice. If I recall, Jack was not outside when the lift blew over. If so, he might not have been there when the wind picked up, and his statement may have simply reflected his personal observations,from earlier when he was outside, as opposed to an “obvious” CYA. Moreover to say that he should be fired over such a comment is absurd.
i also thought the grief they got for the accident was unwarranted. I believe I read that the winds were faster than what the lifts were rated for. However, I would not put the blame on JS or BK for not knowing what the wind ratings were for the lifts or for not checking them. Sure they are in charge of the program, but that is not their area of expertise. Someone at ND should have been aware of the ratings, but not them.
Yeah, you’re a Kellylover in their eyes, but there’s still hope for you with that stance. 10 Hail Marys and promise to openly campaign for the next HC to bring back the fullback and salvation can be yours!
And another thing… I’m not sure who they meant with “Ridicule in the national media.” Kelly was never ridiculed in the national media at any point in his Notre Dame tenure, unless you want to count guys like Paul Finebaum and sports radio jocks. In fact, the tenor in the national media has generally been “this guy isn’t great but he’s pretty good, and if he can’t get it done there maybe nobody can.” I’m left to conclude that they’re referring to Finebaum’s “miserable person” comment and others like it.
So in one fell swoop, the ad-makers sided with the NCAA and Paul Finebaum. Against Notre Dame. In print. Umm…
Not sure what you’re talking about. The ad has done its job, Bob Stoops just announced he’s leaving Oklahoma after this season. I didn’t read past the headline, but I’m just going to assume it’s to fill the soon to be vacant head coaching position at Notre Dame.
If I were BK, I would jump at that spot so fast (reports are Lincoln Riley will take it, but he is 33 and I am sure more of an interim role since no real candidates are available). I love ND, but if I supported a family as a FB coach, HC at ND is not a position I would want.
I thought, and still think, Kelly was far and away the best possible hire at the time. I think he is pretty easily a top 10 CFB coach right now (only definitely behind Saban/Meyer/Dabo/Shaw). That said, I am pretty indifferent on whether we retain him, mostly I am fine with it because I doubt many/if any outside that list could do better.
BUT (to counter, my counter). The outpouring of totally irrational hate for BK since the moment he was hired, has always made me root for him personally way more than any other coach. Often times I would like to see him leave and win a NC, at say OU, just to shut up those dumb pos’s.
Lincoln Riley is probably a hotter coaching commodity than Brian Kelly – i.e., Oklahoma almost assuredly would rather have Riley as their HC, as would most schools right now. Brian Kelly is nowhere near considered a top-10 coach at the moment – http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/ranking-the-top-25-power-five-college-football-coaches-entering-the-2017-season/
This is like if we hired Urban Meyer in the summer of ’97 after one year at Notre Dame.
Both Meyer and Riley at 33 years old. Major youth movement.
In terms of age, perhaps, but not in terms of experience. Lincoln Riley has run two straight top-10 offenses. The first year he was #7 in the country after completely rehauling an offensive philosophy, and last year he was #1 (and has the projected #1 offense in the country this year). If Notre Dame had canned BK and hired Lincoln Riley this past offseason, the worst thing anybody would say about it was that it was risky; it would certainly not be considered a clear downgrade, and personally I would have been quite pleased with it.
Also, (and obviously this is impossible to know for sure) if you could go back in time and name Urban Meyer coach in 1997, don’t you think Notre Dame has more wins over the last twenty years?
I forgot Riley’s been at OU for two years. So, if we hired Meyer in the summer of ’98. Yeah, I’d say Riley is more experienced in comparison I guess.
I don’t think if Riley was hired here this off-season that it would’ve been wildly popular. Lack of head coaching experience, still very young, not quite Leach-level air raid offense but pretty close, and living his entire life nowhere near South Bend.
Lots of reason to believe he’d fall flat on his face here. No doubt he’d be a fun and refreshing hire, to be fair.
And duh, to your last question!
To clarify, yeah, I meant the mainstream press. If we hired him, Rock’s House and similar we-need-a-fullback rabblers would freak.
There is a huge difference between being a hot coaching commodity and a good head coach. When it comes to hiring, sure take the hot young coach, that is what I would do. But does it mean Riley is anywhere near as good a coach as BK, absolutely not.
If I were OU, a team that can roll out of bed and win 10 games, then luck into a playoff spot by beating up on bad competition every couple years, I would 100% take BK over Riley. If I were ND, someone who basically needs to find the next Meyer in order to consistently compete for an NC, I would think long and hard about taking a flyer on a hot young coach or a proven very good coach, basically a toss up.
As to the CBS article. There is no actual reason to put about anyone outside the top 8 ahead of BK.
In what world is Bill Snyder 10 spots ahead of BK? Sure he is a top 10 coach, and I would put him in the same tier as BK, but how is he 10 spots better. On top of that, he is much older, and further removed from his best seasons. People say he has done more with less, but he has never tried to do the most with more. BK has higher highs, fewer lows, a better winning % and Snyder hasn’t fielded consistently great teams since 2003.
Ferentz/Mullen/Cutcliffe. Please. Someone like Whittingham is mostly projection.
These are my coaching tiers
Saban/Meyer – clearly the best
Dabo/Peterson/Shaw – Dabo/Petersen could move up, Shaw probably won’t at Stanford
Harbaugh/Jimbo – Harbaugh hasn’t actually won anything, Jimbo was only good with Winston, still want to see some consistency
Petrino/Patterson/Kelly/Snyder/Dantonio/Stoops/Richt.
I pretty much exclude Petrino even though I think he could kind of fall in that second tier. I think BK would be better than Dantonio/Patterson in similar situations.
I think BK would be about on par with Stoops, but is probably better right now (if Stoops weren’t retiring). Basically, give BK 18 years at OU and he could win a title (is already tied for as many 1 of fewer loss seasons in FBS).
I don’t really have too much disagreement with your tiering until you get to Kelly, for whom I think you give far, far too much credit. I’d view Snyder, Patterson, Dantonio, and Petrino (for all his issues) in a tier above Kelly, who then would be more appropriately placed in the Richt/Whittingham/Malzahn/Gundy/Ferentz/Mullen grouping.
What have any of them accomplished that Kelly hasn’t? When was the last time they had a top 10 team? Dantonio and Kelly to me are the most similar of all coaches out there. They have both coached 13 years in FBS, have similar highs, similar lows, same number of 10 win seasons, BK has a slightly better winning %, identical bowl W-L.
Patterson seems very similar to those too also, the only problem is that so much of his coaching experience was in a garbage conference. Since he joined the Big 12, he has looked a lot like Kelly and Dantonio.
I am guessing you value winning big name bowl games. I would obvious rather win them than lose them, but to me getting smoked in a NC game is way better than winning the Rose Bowl. I put absolutely 0 value in bowl games. They are probably the silliest most meaningless thing in all of college sports.
And I agree on Petrino. As I said, could possibly be considered in tier 2, I am more sold on him than Harbaugh, but not a person really worth including.
If we’re comparing people with similar resumes to Brian Kelly where they are coaching at TCU, Michigan State, etc. is that *they are not coaching at Notre Dame*. Comparable resumes at non-comparable schools means that those guys are outcoaching him. Bill Synder, especially, has done far more with his career and the last seven years (one more win, even!) than BK. Because of the disparate situations, he is a surefire CFB Hall of Famer, whereas Brian Kelly is, well, not.
My criteria for who the best coaches right now are in descending order 1. What have you done in the past 5 or so years. Especially what are your highest achievements in that time 2. What is the outlook of your team (more or less last year advanced stats and next years projected). 3. What is your historical record.
1. BK has a top 10 team, and a NCG appearance. Dantonio has 2 top 10 teams, and a semi final appearance. Snyder has 1 top 10 team, one other 10 win season. Patterson has 2 top 10 teams. Dantonio>BK>Patterson>Snyder, but mostly all pretty even.
2. ND is looking a lot better than MSU right now. KSU and ND are pretty similar. TCU was significantly lower than ND/KSU last year in F/+. I would say these are all comparable, outside MSU.
3. Snyder hands down dominates this one. But he has been no better than BK since 2003. BK and Dantonio match here. It is tough to compare Patterson because he was in a way easier league, so I don’t think his overall resume is any more impressive than BK or Dantonio. BK and Dantonio have basically the same overall resume.
Overall, these coaches seem pretty balanced to me. Snyder will deservedly go into the HOF, but not because of anything he has done in the past 10 years and I certainly wouldn’t want him taking over ND right now.
I am a little confused at your last response. Are you saying that winning in the WAC is more impressive than winning at ND?
You’re arguing both sides of this, saying that BK is a better coach than Stoops because he would have done better than him at Oklahoma over that time, but then doing a straight-up comparison of BK to the other coaches who are not in as-good program situations as Notre Dame. My point is, BK’s absolute record may be marginally better than Snyder/Dantonio/Patterson etc., but that they are even comparable is proof that BK is not on their level when they are coaching at programs that are comparable to Notre Dame. BK should have at least 7-10 more wins than all of them over the last 7 years if you wanted to treat them as comparably successful coaches.
I am not saying any of them would necessarily be better ND coaches than BK, especially going forward given the ages of some of them. But I am saying they are better coaches than him, because, like, they pretty clearly are.
I think the difference here is that I believe Kelly at TCU/MSU/OU, really anywhere, would easily have more wins than he does at ND.
You seem to think ND has advantages in winning over those schools. I will grant that ND has advantages in making (ergo winning) a NC, but it is much easier to get 10 wins at MSU, etc., than at ND. Especially TCU when it was in the WAC. I believe one season ND played 10 teams that went to a bowl game.
Maybe you have been following ND for longer than I have, I didn’t grow up following them back in the glory days. Since the early 2000s, ND has done very little to give itself an actual advantage over many other programs. I feel that the built in recruiting advantage over MSU is nullified by the harder schedule, academics rigors, slowness to moderize, etc, etc. I consider ND and MSU to be pretty comparable football schools.
Guys, Paul Finebaum is seriously reporting that Stoops is positioning himself for the ND job after Kelly gets fired. And he didn’t even reference me as his source! Rude.
Stoops for ND ’18!!!
As a student last year, I did not even know these observer ads were a thing. Granted, I do not read the observer on the daily, but I do not remember any discussion from any of my residents in Carroll Hall or any of my friends on campus about the ads.
From looking at the ads, I’m surprised there was not a bigger discussion on campus. We joke all the time about 4-8 football, and basketball was in full swing by that time period. I just find it interesting that I had no clue about these advertisements.
So if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around to hear it…
Whatever “Carroll Hall” is, I don’t think it counts as “on campus” or part of “Notre Dame.” Sounds made up.
I was going to refrain, but since this thing annoys me so much, I have to once again point out the numerous factual inaccuracies and misrepresentations.
– “0-10 against top 12 teams the last four years”: Not true, as we beat end-of-year #3 Michigan State in 2013. 1-9 obviously isn’t a whole lot better than 0-10, but it’s an easily checkable number and it looks stupid to get it wrong. So (a) it’s wrong, and (b) it’s pretty clearly massaged. The time fence was obviously set at 4 years specifically to exclude the 2012 season. If you extend it to top 15 teams over Kelly’s tenure, we also beat end-of-year #11 MSU in 2011 and #7 Stanford and #15 Oklahoma in 2012. If you go the other way and trim it to top 10 teams, you would have to take out losses to #12 Michigan in 2011 (would that we could), #11 Stanford in 2013, and #12 Stanford in 2016. The thing that kills me is that “2-10 against Top 10 teams in Kelly’s tenure” stands well enough on its own – why massage it?!?
– “But Jack says ‘It’s harder to win now than in 1988′”: Again, a factual error wrapped up in a misrepresentation – that shouldn’t be in quotes because that’s not what he said! And on top of that it badly misrepresents what he said, to the extent that it seems extremely deliberate. Jack Nolan asked him if he felt it was harder to win now than it was in 1988, and he said this: “I think undoubtedly it is harder… But it doesn’t make any difference. It’s harder to win basketball games than it was back then. It’s harder to do a number of things. We don’t treat any of that as an excuse or a reason to have different goals… We have to do a better job with it, that’s all.” I’ll let that stand well enough on its own.
– “Record over last three seasons”: A deliberate misrepresentation. Kelly was extended in January 2016, when over the four previous seasons (see, I can play this game too), he had a .745 win percentage, or, you know, slightly above the historic win percentage quoted in the article. He wasn’t extended after posting a three-year win percentage on par with Willingham’s, which is what the ad leads you to believe.
Again, I’m not saying there wasn’t plenty of legitimate reason to be upset last year, because obviously there was. I’m obviously on record here as being onboard with giving Kelly one year to turn things around, but I wouldn’t have been upset if he was canned last year. But when you put out something that’s so obviously a ham-fisted propaganda piece, you kill any chance of anyone taking you seriously.
I think a new thread should be started wherein everyone will post photos of what they think Mike Murphy, “89 looks like.
Also someone mentioned “old people.” This is not an age thing. This is an echo chamber thing and a people-who-are-curmudgeonly-far-out-of-proportion-to-their-age thing.
A wild Mouth appears!