Notre Dame isn’t looking for a head coach right now. At least, the job isn’t open. However, the speculation over the next head man in South Bend is already thousands (millions?) of page views deep.

Today, I am beginning a set of 3 articles that will rate the candidates to someday coach the Fighting Irish. As is usual, coaching speculation is completely silly season full of panic, odd personal attachments, and misplaced priorities. In other words, most coaching candidate lists are terrible. In some cases, they are deliberately terrible for optimal outrage. It’s a race to the hottest take.

My goal is to try and best measure the candidates and their worthiness. In doing so, we’ll see some obvious no-brainer candidates but I hope that it also provides a good frame work for the right coach and open up discussion for what we’re looking for from potential candidates and why.

Scratched Off

Before I lay out the grading system we need to scratch off some names. The list of elite head coaches taking lateral jobs within blue-blood programs is about as sparse as Mike Leach’s run game playbook. Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, and Florida State are each inside the Top 12 in all-time winning percentage. As such, we’re going to cut out Saban, Meyer, Harbaugh, and Fisher on the grounds that virtually no one in the country thinks they’re coming to Notre Dame.

There are a handful of programs inside the all-time Top 12 with coaches that we will include, for various reasons. I don’t think there will be a major objection to this decision but we welcome all opinions against or for anyone.

Head Coaches Only

Folks have been putting lists together for Notre Dame for many years and one of the more level-headed and sane ideas is to only choose from head coaches in the college ranks. In truth, the next coach is at least 95% likely to come from someone currently leading a college football program.

If only to keep the list somewhat manageable we will only include college head coaches.

Recruiting

This may seem sacrilegious but I’m not going to factor in recruiting prowess much, if at all. That is going to be controversial but I look at things this way:

Let’s say every candidate on the list ends up going 17-9 through their first two years at Notre Dame. I guarantee just about every coach would bring in classes ranked somewhere from 7th to 15th nationally. In other words, recruiting at Notre Dame is pretty stable and self-sufficient that there’s not enough evidence to believe someone will do worse because of inexperience or come in and out-recruit Saban.

Reaching sustained elite heights in recruiting is going to take success on the field no matter what and I’ll focus on the coaching side of things. It’s super difficult to project anyone to be an out-of-the-box tremendous recruiter anyway–and while there may be legit concerns about someone recruiting nationally in Notre Dame’s spotlight–a lot of that can be overcome with experience and quality coaching.

Missed the Cut

In addition to the elite names mentioned above we had to scratch other coaches off the list before grading them. Most of these men have found some success in varying degrees throughout their careers (and thus are worth a mention) but they’re names I’d imagine every Irish fan would have deep reservations coming to South Bend in their present form.

The coaches include:

Niumatalolo, Narduzzi, Mendenhall, Clawson, Strong, Kingsbury, Holgorsen, Ferentz, Rodriguez, Graham, Helfrich, Mora, Leach, Jones, Freeze, Cutcliffe, and Snyder.

If you strenuously object, bring it up in the comment section!

Grading

I’m going to try something similar to the way I published the Top 75 Losses in Notre Dame History (what a fun series!) except with the coaches there’s going to be a little bit more wiggle room for opinion. That’s what makes this endeavor worth throwing out there, though.

WINNING- 6 Points
EXPERIENCE- 5 Points
CEILING- 3 Points
REALISTIC- 3 Points
FIT- 2 Points
SCHEME- 1 Point

TOTAL- 20 Points

I’ll be using decimals to the tenth percent. Winning is pretty self explanatory–coaches with higher winning percentages will be rewarded in addition to big wins and post-season success. For experience many years coaching by itself isn’t notable but it clearly helps. Many years with winning is highly valued. So is coaching at more than one school and proving you can adjust to different scenes, circumstances, and styles.

Younger coaches who have proven they can win big games are valued. We’re looking for a trajectory where you’re currently in your prime or your best days are just ahead as far as ceiling is concerned. A coach that is realistic allows some opinion to separate each coach based on where they are in their careers and how likely they would be to leave their current situation for Notre Dame.

For fit we’re looking at personality, media comfort, and charisma as things that definitely matter. Personal beliefs and cultural background (religion, race, etc.) are less important compared to the belief you could sell (and accept) Notre Dame’s uniqueness and academic rigors. Finally, we’ll leave some room for scheme for the coaches who have displayed an ability to teach their system and consistently produce on at least one side of the ball.

The Top 30 countdown will begin soon…