Can Brian Kelly's Political Savvy Help Irish Make the College Football Playoff?

The son of an alderman. The aide to a Massachusetts state senator. Experience on the presidential campaign trail.

Brian Kelly came to Notre Dame looking like both a successful football coach and a polished political candidate. A day after the midterm elections, the leader of the Fighting Irish will need to utilize every skill in his diverse skill set to help Notre Dame climb its way into the four-team College Football Playoff. 

On the field, Kelly will need to lead his young Irish squad to four more victories—none more important than Saturday's showdown with No. 9 Arizona State, a rare (non-SEC) Top 10 matchup among the selection committee's best teams. 

Off the field, Kelly will need to remind the 12-man committee—and the media at large—of Notre Dame's achievements this year. Even short three front-line starters after an academic violation, the Irish have managed to go 7-1 on the season and came within one controversial flag of an upset victory of defending champion Florida State. 

That body of work just hasn't impressed the selection committee thus far. Notre Dame sits behind seven other one-loss teams, a head-scratcher for a head coach who finally dipped his toes in the water of defending his team's schedule on Tuesday. 

When asked to assess the slate his team has played so far, Kelly laid out a reasonable argument for valuing the Irish's schedule, a once-daunting schedule that softened once it transitioned from paper to gridiron. 

"I think you've got to look at the fact that all [games are] power-five except for Conference USA defending champs Rice, who are playing pretty good football right now," Kelly said. "I think you take that versus other teams that have really had glorified byes in their schedule."

Those cupcake games seem to have slid by the selection committee's gaze. The four playoff teams each have FCS opponents on their schedules—in essence, the "glorified byes" that Kelly mentioned. So do the five other teams that sit in front of the Irish. 

Coming off a less-than-impressive 49-39 victory over Navy, Kelly wasn't able to boast about a team that's clearly playing better than they were in early September. But the head coach articulated two points that'll likely become talking points moving forward. 

First, the difficulty of playing a balanced schedule and the necessity to actually play your best players. Against FCS opponents, top programs spend maybe half the game playing their starters while their depth charts get a workout as the score becomes lopsided. Notre Dame doesn't have that luxury.

Kelly pointed to tight end Ben Koyack, who leads the Irish in participation, having played 636 snaps. Kelly compared that to some teams ahead of the Irish who have only played their top starters around 450 snaps.

"I think the one thing that you have to understand is the amount of plays that our guys have to play," Kelly said. "You have to play your guys for four quarters. ... Our guys are playing a very rugged schedule. They're playing a lot of snaps. That makes a big difference when you've got to play that many snaps each and every year, and that's the kind of schedule we play."

But the biggest things working against the Irish right now are down seasons by Stanford and Michigan. The Cardinal were expected to be a Top 10 team. The Wolverines had hopes of competing for a Big Ten title.

Add in games against Top 25-caliber programs like Arizona State, Louisville and North Carolina—in addition to everybody's preseason No. 1 in Florida State—and nobody saw Notre Dame's schedule being a liability in August. 

Kelly wisely took aim at that logic as well.

"Look, in 2012, I think we started the season with the No. 1 schedule in the country. I think we started that way this year, too," Kelly said. "That's all we can do. We go into this putting together the toughest schedule in the country.

"Nobody else does it that way. They put on teams that are clearly glorified byes. We don't operate that way. That, to me, is strength of schedule in terms of the way we put it together."

Ultimately, this process can only be viewed at its conclusion. Even during Notre Dame's run to the BCS title game, they needed late-season losses by Kansas State and Oregon to make their move to No. 1.

And while Tuesday night announcements on ESPN have been good for exploding Twitter and igniting debate, the committee was charged with finding the right four teams at the end of the season, not necessarily on the way.

Until then, Kelly can only control what is his to control. That means winning football games on the field. And likely "educating" committee members along the way. 

Good thing for Irish fans that Notre Dame's head coach has shown himself to be good at both parts of the job. 

*Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained firsthand.