No, Brian Kelly Does Not Have 105 Wins at "Notre Dame," and No, He Has Not Matched Knute Rockne; NCAA Sanctions Leave Him at 84 wins

Brian Kelly's current record at "Notre Dame" is 84-39.

He does not have 105 wins. And he has not matched Knute Rockne.

That comes regardless of attempts by his university employer, Comcast-owned NBC, and, by implication, Brian Kelly himself, to mislead football fans into thinking otherwise. His official record now stands at 84-39.

Unfortunately for all involved, the false attempts to assert a 105 number, rather than "let sleeping dogs lie," simply provides cause, more than anything else, to bring up the unpleasant scandal that resulted in two full years of "Notre Dame" football essentially being wiped off the record books.

Comcast-owned NBC, within their broadcast, did try to bring up the fact of NCAA sanctions removing 21 wins from the record books. Yet they did so as a kind of secondary footnote, almost like a piece of trivia, while continuing to tout the false figure of 105 as if it actually existed. Even more blameworthy, their sideline reporter, in a post-game interview with Brian Kelly, actually brought up just the false 105 figure as if it were "flat-out" fact, asking for a response. Brian Kelly himself failed to correct her, and proceeded to act as if her false assertion was true, under the guise of thanking people who had helped get to that (false, not-yet-attained) level.

"Notre Dame's" media people pulled a similar manipulative and misleading tactic in their online post reporting the result of the Purdue game. They literally relegated to an asterisk footnote the fact that 21 false phantom "wins" were disqualified by the NCAA. Yet, the footnote was an obscure addendum that was entirely secondary to them advancing, in the lead paragraph of their article, that "With the win, Dick Corbett Head Football Coach Brian Kelly tied Knute Rockne for most win all-time at Notre Dame (105ˆ )." In other words, they actively sought to mislead alumni, fans and others into thinking that the 105 number actually exists, highlighting that false assertion as their main point. And that was the only point immediately being presented in their lead paragraph, indeed within the entire main body of the post.

Brian Kelly's official record could have been better had he and "Notre Dame" administrators run a cleaner program, if they had prevented certain academic fraud by football players that had been spearheaded by a student trainer.

Interestingly enough, Kelly's official record still might been higher if "Notre Dame" had not necessarily handled the academic fraud disciplinary proceedings in the manner in which they did.

Their own administrative processes apparently addressed the cheating in a manner that allowed the NCAA, or whatever obscure figures fed into the NCAA process, to observe that "Notre Dame" itself had retroactively rendered particular players ineligible.

In other words, the way the university "teed up" their response created a new factual record, regarding those players, that enabled the NCAA to observe that "Notre Dame" had rendered certain players ineligible retroactively.

As a result, the NCAA issued sanctions that, in addition to other penalties, vacated 21 supposed "wins" by "Notre Dame," which all but wiped off the record books two entire years of "Notre Dame" football under Brian Kelly.

Only the five losses remained from those two years.

Now, by comparison, one recalls an obscure on-air debate over the status of the Heisman Trophy given to Southern Cal's Reggie Bush, after it came out that Bush had been retroactively deemed ineligible (which also resulted in Southern Cal vacating a number of wins).

With regard to Bush and the Heisman, one long-time commentator argued that awards like the Heisman should be based on what one does "on the field."

A former "Notre Dame" Heisman winner responded that, to be "on the field," you had to be eligible.

Similar obvious logic applies to Brian Kelly's non-wins. To be on the field, the players had to be eligible. If the university itself declared facts that made relevant players not eligible, the supposed "wins" were not really wins.

The situation with Brian Kelly's false "wins," of course, are even more to the point than the situation with Reggie Bush and the Heisman. The Heisman is just an official award, given based upon subjective impressions. Yet even in that case, as pointed out by the "Notre Dame" Heisman winner commentator, that Bush had been ineligible meant that Bush should have given the trophy back, which he did.

In the case of Brian Kelly's phantom "wins," the issue is the official result of a football game, and officials wins, or lack thereof, in the official record book. Brian Kelly, at this time, has 84 official wins, in the official record book.

Unfortunately, as mentioned before, any public relations-hungry motivation to falsely assert a 105 number, rather than "let sleeping dogs lie," simply reminds everyone of the terrible scandal that essentially wiped two years off the record books for "Notre Dame" football.

Hopefully for the sake of the sensibilities of fans it will not cause the public to be reminded of other scandals and tragedies that the insitution tried to play down and side-step, such as the student deaths that occurred early on, brushes with the law by various players and other issues.

The university itself has seen a steady erosion across time of ethical standards, including open defiance of Catholic values, even as its public relations still seek to exploit God, the Blessed Mother and a false veneer of tradition for an institution with officials steadily defying and ignoring tradition.

The twisting of numbers in the context of scandal does them no good.

The "Notre Dame"football media guide and their latest post even seem additionally confused and misleading about the matter.

The number they cite, of 20 regular season games and two post-season games being vacated, or 22 total, is inconsistent with the number of 21 advanced by everyone else. It also is inconsistent with the records they themselves are posting. For example, the only seasons that "Notre Dame" is indicating were implicated, 2012 and 2013, only featured one post-season victory in the Pinstripe Bowl. So it would have been impossible for two post-season false "wins" to have been vacated in those two seasons. In 2012, "Notre Dame" got blown out by Alabama, one of their many embarrasing losses in major bowls during the quarter-century during which they have failed to be competitive in any major bowl game.

Even worse, even more Orwellian and delusional, is the terminology in the official "Notre Dame" football media guide for 2021, p. 144, declaring that the "actual records" were a higher amount.

The actual records are the official records.

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["Notre Dame" is placed in quotes out of respect for the Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus, her Divine Son. The words "Notre Dame," of course, are French for "Our Lady," referring to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. It would be disrespectful to imply that she would be associated with various scandals emerging in the current era at the post-secondary institution near the Indiana-Michigan border whose nonprofit corporation persists in calling the institution "Notre Dame du Lac," including those scandals demonstrating lack of fidelity to Christ, such as the honoring, hiring or retention of pro-abortion politicians and faculty.]

Key Words: Notre Dame, Notre Dame Football, Brian Kelly, NCAA, Scandals, Ethics, Catholic

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