Notre Dame Football: Brian Kelly is in uncharted territory

Four Notre Dame football coaches have led the team through more than 100 games. The other three have championships, and then there’s Brian Kelly.

Brian Kelly parlayed an undefeated 2009 season at Cincinnati into the Notre Dame football head coaching job. Now he’s going on eight years with the Irish and the expectations are mounting.

In his third year in South Bend, he took his team to the BCS Championship game. That should have been a sign of good things to come, however, the subsequent years have been anything but reassuring.

Four coaches in the history of the school have coached in at least 100 games: Knute Rockne, Ara Paseghian, Lou Holtz and Brian Kelly. That inner circle of long-tenured men boasts some of the all-time greats, not just of Notre Dame football, but of the sport as a whole. And then there’s Brian Kelly.

All three of Kelly’s 100+ game predecessors were winners. Rockne won 89.7 percent of his games, Parseghian won 84.8 percent and Holtz won 76.9 percent. Kelly has won just 67 percent — and that’s counting the wins from the vacated 2012 season.

Although he hasn’t been bad at Notre Dame, he hasn’t been exceptional either. Rockne, Parseghian and Holtz all won national championships. Kelly has come close, but like his lacking win percentage, came up shy of the expectations set by an institution the likes Notre Dame.

Next: 10 best players in Notre Dame history

Most schools would willingly take two 10-win seasons in the span of three years. But Kelly’s consistent good-but-not-great results could see even that remarkable accomplish begin to wear on the decision makers before long. It’s too soon to put Kelly on the hot seat, per se, but it would also be naive to think anyone coaching at Notre Dame that isn’t winning National Championships is truly safe.