Notre Dame has become the punchline to a bad joke over the last 12 months.
From fringe contender for the College Football Playoff last August to 4-8 and a coach in Brian Kelly firmly entrenched on the hot seat, things have changed quite a bit in South Bend since Manti Te'o and Everett Golson led the Fighting Irish to the BCS National Championship Game following the 2012 season.
Kelly is still deflecting blame.
In a story published Thursday by Matt Hayes of Bleacher Report, Kelly specifically blamed fundraising during the season for a football-only facility on 2016's woes, saying that it messed up the year.
"I was the absent professor," Kelly told Hayes. "I wasn't paying attention to the details that we needed. There were internal issues that -- if a guy is on it, and he's doing his job as the head coach, he would've seen those things early."
Sure, he's admitting that he was distracted. That's, at best, partial responsibility. But what he was distracted by is something that, whether he likes it or not, is a major part of the job responsibility of a college coach.
Add that to this list of people and things Kelly has recently blamed for Notre Dame not living up to expectations compiled last year by SB Nation. He even blamed the center for inconsistent shotgun snaps against NC State last year in a game that took place in the middle of Hurricane Matthews. I'm no coach, but maybe -- just maybe -- shotgun snaps in the middle of driving rain aren't the best idea in the world.
This isn't working.
Kelly and Notre Dame is a marriage that peaked early, sustained for a little while but is incapable of navigating through the rocky waters. It is destined to fail and is heading full-speed toward a messy breakup.
Kelly is a tiger who won't change his stripes. He will continually find fault with everybody but himself. His mismanagement of the quarterback battle last year between Deshone Kizer and Malik Zaire led to an absence of identity in an offense that was loaded with talent. What's more, he even called out Kizer during the NFL Draft process after the junior signal-caller jumped early.
"When we turn over our young men to the NFL, we want to say they're finished products, and DeShone's not there yet," Kelly told PFT Live. "He needed more time. We clearly understood his decision to go to the NFL, and we supported him, but I was merely saying that, again, he's a young man that could use more time at Notre Dame."
It wasn't fundraising, boosters or anything else that goes along with the job description of a college coach. It was Kelly -- and has been Kelly since the Golson-Zaire quarterback rotation in 2014.
That's not to say that he can't change. He might. But it's clear from his statement to Hayes that some aspects of this college job don't suit him well, and those aren't changing. Money will still need to be raised -- ideally in the spring, not the fall -- and boosters will still have to be schmoozed.
What's more, the window for an NFL job is likely closed after a .596 winning percentage over the last four years -- a worse winning percentage than Lane Kiffin's .651 mark during his four years at USC in the face of massive scholarship restrictions.
If Kelly is still playing the blame game at this point, the marriage can't be saved. Kelly's over it, and Notre Dame should be over him -- shortly.