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Simulating to find the best Notre Dame Football team in the Brian Kelly era

By Daniel Morrison

SOUTH BEND, INDIANA - OCTOBER 05: Head coach Brian Kelly and players of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish prepare to take the field for the game against the Bowling Green Falcons at Notre Dame Stadium on October 05, 2019 in South Bend, Indiana. (Photo by Quinn Harris/Getty Images)
SOUTH BEND, INDIANA - OCTOBER 05: Head coach Brian Kelly and players of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish prepare to take the field for the game against the Bowling Green Falcons at Notre Dame Stadium on October 05, 2019 in South Bend, Indiana. (Photo by Quinn Harris/Getty Images) /
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Ian Book. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
Ian Book. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) /

Simulating to find the best Notre Dame Football team in the Brian Kelly era

So, What Teams are in the Tournament?

Brian Kelly has coached an awkward number of seasons for a tournament format, at eleven. This makes it pretty much impossible to include every team in the tournament.

Besides, who wants to remember the 2016 team?

Instead of using as many Kelly-era teams as possible, it’s best to use the four best teams of his eleven seasons in South Bend. The next trick is figuring out who those four teams are. The first three, luckily, are fairly obvious.

Congratulations to the top three seeds, 2012, 2018, and 2020 Notre Dame football teams. They’re the three unbeaten regular season teams that Kelly has had at Notre Dame.

The next team, which is the final team, is more difficult to determine. Objectively, three contenders make sense here, 2015, 2017, and 2019 teams. That’s because these three teams are the ones who won at least ten games during the season.

Now, you could debate which of these teams is best. The 2017 team only got its 10th win in the bowl game, but the 2015 team lost their bowl game. Of course, that was the Fiesta Bowl they lost and not a middle-tier bowl game.

Meanwhile, the 2019 team felt frustrating but was still one of the best teams in all of college football. So, it’s actually best to, instead of blindly debating with myself, put these teams through a play-in simulator. Everyone plays everyone in a round-robin.

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