Think about it though, Saban sells the opportunity to win championships as his #1 proposition.
BINGO!!!
That's the entirety of the point. Thank you!
Kelly does not get elite recruits in bundles because he cannot make an effective football argument to entice them to attend the school.
He has not demonstrated high level coaching acumen on the field of play that recruits and their interested parties can observe that would lead them to believe Kelly can put them in a position to compete for championships and make it to the NFL.
This issue is further exasperated by Kelly and the football administration staff being woefully behind the times in marketing the program in an interesting and innovative manner that would also help to draw recruits to the school.
The other items are just ancillary excuse making and have proved to be obstacles easily overcome once a football coach at ND exhibits the ability to produce championship caliber teams (Holtz) or even provides a short glimmer that a championship is possible (both Weis and Kelly for one recruiting cycle).
The fact of the matter is, when your team is consistently getting dominated on the largest stages it becomes difficult to present a plausible argument that you will be able to coach a player to the abilities of the coaches that are dominating your very same team on the field. This is especially true of a coach well into his tenure at school--the point Kelly finds himself at now.
These are all factual and observable phenomenon that have occurred out in the real world that can be supported.
They aren't overly emotional and reactionary complaints levied without a shrewd of evidence such as ND can't recruit top 5 classes because of academics or geography. If that was in fact true, no coach at ND ever would have. The reality is that I believe almost every coach at ND has brought in top 5 classes or at least top 10, even the much maligned Bob Davie and Tyrone Willingham. However, Kelly has now strung together several classes outside of the top 10 and it has pretty much become the norm.
In the face of all this evidence one can only conclude that Kelly is the primary limiting factor inhibiting ND from securing top 5 recruiting classes, not some random inherent disadvantages that some posters would have people believe.
Its Notre Dame, not Iowa State. The excuse making needs to stop and Kelly needs to rightfully be held responsible for the recruiting failures because there is none among us that would doubt that Dabo, Meyer, or Saban would not consistently secure top 5 classes at this school.
The whole argument is positively inane.