September 4th marks the debut of the Brian Kelly era in South Bend. For the fourth time since 1997 Notre Dame has a new coach, and, once again, Irish fans are wondering if he can lead them back to prominence and succeed where his three predecessors failed.

To be certain, Kelly brings with him many attributes absent from the three previous coaches. He has college …

Part 2 of this series of articles will cover the effects of scheduling and the benefit that playing home games have on a program, and how these areas have affected Notre Dame. While Part 1 focused on the player impact on a program, recruiting and development—something the coach and his staff have greater control over—this article specifically looks at factors that tend to be tied …

I originally came up with the idea of creating “five-year profiles” because I wanted to evaluate the entire Charlie Weis period at Notre Dame on a scale relative to the rest of college football. The thought was that if we could create a snapshot of what the last five seasons (2005-2009) looked like at ND  in comparison to what that same period looked like for …

Clashmore Mike is proud to announce that we’ve accepted an invitation to take part in this year’s iteration of the Irish Blogger Gathering. Started by Subway Domer, the Irish Blogger Gathering is an ongoing roundtable featuring a who’s who of Notre Dame communities on the web. Each week one site will pose a group of questions and link to the corresponding answers provided by the …

Thanks to all who participated in the 2010 Season Predictions Survey. When the data to support this analysis was gathered, over 1,500 votes had been cast.

The primary goal of this exercise is to move beyond simply estimating a win-loss record. Selecting the percent confidence in a win on a game-by-game basis is not only much more accurate, it also allows for some interesting follow-on …

Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a five-part series detailing the blueprint for winning the BCS national championship and measuring the Irish performance against this standard.

As Irish fans know all too well, Notre Dame hasn’t been part of the national title picture for over a decade. The last year the lads in blue and gold laid a legitimate claim to a championship …

It’s been no secret that Notre Dame has had a string of sub-par football coaches. For 14 years, the school has bounced back and forth like a pinball from one coach to the next. The last truly successful coach for the Irish was Lou Holtz. His career at Notre Dame spanned 11 seasons: a pretty respectable tenure. But, the most impressive thing about Holtz and his …

Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment of a five-part series detailing the blueprint for winning the BCS national championship and measuring the Irish performance against this standard.

As the offensive and defensive results indicate, there is certainly a blueprint for winning a BCS national championship. The overwhelming majority of the last 10 champions performed at very similar levels in the same statistical categories, and, …

Editor’s note: This is the third installment of a five-part series detailing the blueprint for winning the BCS national championship and measuring the Irish performance against this standard.

What is the defensive recipe for winning the BCS national championship? The aforementioned approach has been used to parse the data and identify the statistical metrics common to BCS champions. Staying consistent with the offensive results, these …