Bagpipe Monday: Making Notre Dame Football Great Again

“Bagpipe Monday” is a weekly “column” about Notre Dame Football that I started about 8 years ago. At the time, I needed the structure of having something to write about each day, and to be honest, I just like saying the title.

Bagpipes are perhaps the most identifiable musical instrument on the planet, and hearing a hard blast from the pipes makes you alert and ready for whatever is coming up next. This is exactly what you need on a Monday.

“Making Notre Dame Football great again” has the same kind of ring to it as, “Return to Glory.” Both signify that something awesome happened in the past- and we should really get back to that soon. It all sounds so simple, doesn’t it?

If you start talking Fighting Irish football with another fan, the chances of you talking about great teams of the past are generally very good. In my case, it’s those Holtz years that everyone seemingly wants to get back to and worship.

It’s understandable, and the numbers add up to just an incredible run for Holtz and the Irish.

Still, we have yet to commercialize time travel, and we sit here in August before the 2016 season. How can Notre Dame be great again? What are they right now? What will it take?

Those are all valid questions, and I’m certain an answer will be in here somewhere (I’m actually not certain, but SHOW NO WEAKNESS).

How does the Brian Kelly era stack up to Holtz right now? Obviously, Kelly still has a very long road ahead, but it’s not the destination- it’s the journey (says the guy who’s thinking about Back To The Future RIGHT NOW).

What will it take? Kelly took this team to play for a national championship a few years ago while going undefeated in the regular season. Isn’t that great? Isn’t that much more Holtzian?

Although a few wins short and no national titles in his back pocket, Brian Kelly has turned the entire Notre Dame Football program around and upside down. A lot of you look at the program and probably don’t see much “Notre Dame,” do you?

What if Brian Kelly takes this team- a team that just had a mass exodus of talent the likes of which we haven’t seen since after the 2006 season (2007... fun times), and wins another 10 games? You would think that a double digit win total in a season would set the next one up and quite possibly trigger a wave of greatness- right?

I’m not sure about much of that, but what I do know is that this program is on an upward trend, and has a legitimate chance to make the playoffs and add more weight to that trend. But does that make us great again? What will it take? Let’s get a tentative agreement put together today.

Your pipes...