Notre Dame grads buy page in school's student paper lambasting AD and coach

Some Notre Dame fans are so unhappy with the state of the school’s football team that they bought a page in the student paper to express their dissatisfaction.

The ad appears in the Dec. 7 issue of The Observer student paper. It blames Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick for failures and expresses a lack of confidence in coach Brian Kelly.

Oh, and it provides a head-to-head comparison with Stanford over the past seven years.

Here’s the ad in all its glory. Or unhappiness. There are a lot of adjectives we could use. It’s quite the flattering picture choice of Kelly.

According to Sports Illustrated, the group said it would be buying an ad in an unnamed paper on Sunday. Swarbrick has stood by Kelly and said the coach’s job is not in jeopardy, though Yahoo Sports reported shortly after the regular season ended that Kelly’s representatives had been checking out other non-Notre Dame gigs.

Notre Dame went 4-8 this season and is just a year removed from a Fiesta Bowl berth. But in addition to the struggles on the field, the NCAA recently announced Notre Dame must vacate its wins from 2012 and 2013 because of academic misconduct issues. The Irish went undefeated and lost to Alabama in the BCS Championship Game in 2012.

The school has said its appealing the sanctions.