Notre Dame Football: Is 2019 national championship or bust season?

After going 12-1 in 2018 with a loss in the College Football Playoff to Clemson, is the 2019 season national title or bust for Notre Dame football?

Brian Kelly left Cincinnati to take the head coaching job at Notre Dame after the 2009 season. He followed in Mark Dantonio’s footsteps, going from Bearcats head coach to the lead man at a prominent Power Five-caliber (Notre Dame is technically not a “Power Five” school) institution.

When he took the job, the expectations were high, as they are for all newly-hired Notre Dame head coaches. He was expected to contend for national titles annually and make his mark on the college football landscape immediately.

Three years in, his Irish lost in the BCS National Championship game. Another three years later, he led the Irish to a New Year’s Six bowl, losing in the Fiesta Bowl to Ohio State. Kelly’s Irish would need another three years before it played in another meaningful bowl game, making it to the College Football Playoff in 2018 after an unbeaten season only to get throttled by Clemson.

Sure, Clemson went on to beat Alabama for the national title and was clearly the top team in the country, but Notre Dame couldn’t even keep it close.

Three big games, three losses. Not just three losses, but three double-digit losses. In those contests, Notre Dame lost by a combined score of 116-45. They weren’t close.

So after another “so close but yet so far” loss in the national semifinal, is Kelly’s time with the Irish running out? Is 2019 a ‘national title or bust’ season for the Irish?

The answer to this must be yes because of what Notre Dame stands for. The program has never been OK with just making it to the big stage and not winning, it expects more. If the Irish ever want to be taken seriously in the college football landscape, they need to win a New Year’s Six or playoff game. They need to actually make these big games close.

Going unbeaten and making it to the College Football Playoff as a No. 3 seed is great, but if you lose that game by four touchdowns, what does that really say about your program’s success?

Kelly and the Irish have to look at 2019 as a ‘national title or bust’ season because another close call with nothing to show for it will be detrimental to the program. Notre Dame will be looked at as a program that can win regular season games but when it comes to the postseason, it’s useless.

If not a national title win in 2019, the Irish need to — at the very least — win a playoff game or New Year’s Six bowl. No more blowouts in big games or Kelly could be on the way out.