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Everyone Watched Brian Kelly Win His Notre Dame Debut (UPDATE)

Brian Kelly’s first Notre Dame team delivered on the field yesterday by beating Purdue 23-12, and they made NBC suits happy as well – the game’s 2.3 overnight rating represented a 77% jump over the Irish’s opener last year.

UPDATE: Nothing from NBC yet, but via the always-helpful Twitter of Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch, a list of Notre Dame opening game ratings from the last decade.

The numbers show that while there was a big increase from last year, it still marks the second-lowest rating among the team’s past 13 openers. Some of that is likely due to viewers having more options, whereas some probably reflects the decline of Notre Dame’s stature within the sport, but this year does break the trend of three straight opener ratings declines from 2007-09.

The rest of the original post is below.

It’s worth noting that last year’s opener was against Nevada, a lower-profile team than Notre Dame’s opponent yesterday – and likely a contributor to last year’s lower ratings. But undoubtedly, most of this year’s spike came due to an interest in Kelly and his vaunted spread offense.

It’s hard to believe a guy who was coaching Division II Grand Valley State (albeit to that level’s national championship) seven years ago would be inspiring such excitement at the most storied program in the land, but winning will do that – and yesterday, as he usually does, Kelly won.

We asked NBC Sports (whose PR arm spread the word about ND’s robust ratings earlier today) how yesterday’s ratings compared to the debuts of the last two Notre Dame coaches (Charlie Weis and Tyrone Willingham), and how the increase over last year compared to their first games as well. If we hear back, we’ll update this post.

For now, the early returns on Kelly are nothing but positive for the Fighting Irish. Certainly, yesterday’s result gave us no reason to believe that he won’t get it done…and we think NBC will be more than happy to keep restructuring its advertising for Notre Dame’s games if Kelly keeps delivering numbers like yesterday’s.

H/T Darren Rovell via Jason McIntyre

AP photo, via