Notre Dame went 4-8 last season, a fact that can’t be discussed enough, because it’s hilarious.
Brian Kelly is the embattled coach in charge of the Fighting Irish, a half-decade removed from the infamous title game loss/rout at the hands of Alabama. In a Bleacher Report profile, Kelly took a bit of responsibility for the disappointing season, but deflected a bit from his own role by noting that he spent time fundraising during the season.
After its coach had to spend too much time, he now reveals to Bleacher Report, fundraising for a football-only facility and not enough making sure he had a firm grasp of his team’s physical and mental focus.
Think about that: The head coach at Notre Dame—which at one point was paying two coaches to not coach (Tyrone Willingham, Charlie Weis) while paying Kelly—was fundraising for a facility during the season.
When asked how that impacted 2016, Kelly says bluntly, “It f–ked up last year’s team.”
[…]
He leans forward on a worn leather couch in his office, in the once state-of-the-art and now-aging Guglielmino Athletics Complex—the facility the university has plans to renovate and Kelly had to fundraise for—to deliver a 60-second soliloquy of admission. Not necessarily of guilt, mind you.
“I was the absent professor,” Kelly says. “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. My flawed philosophy was, We’re going to score points early while we’re figuring it out on the other side with a young defense. Well, that didn’t happen. We gave up way too many points early, we lost three games, and now we’re in trouble.”
It’s hard to look at that as anything other than Kelly blaming his administration for this team’s failures last year, and later on, he didn’t hold back when asked about Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick giving him a vote of confidence:
“I don’t know Jack’s reasoning for it,” Kelly says. “He gets hit more than I do. He’s getting hit by guys that have big pockets. My reaction was, Really? You need to say something? If you’ve got to start defending football coaches after he takes a team to the (BCS) national championship game and a step away from being in the playoffs over the last four years, it’s going to be a rough run for you here after being vacant here for 20 years.”
That’s fascinating posturing from Kelly, and it’s honestly surprising to hear a coach say something like that on the record. Of course there’s a lot of pressure in big money college athletics. Of course Notre Dame has boosters with outsized expectations, deep pockets, and way too much influence. This is life in the big leagues (or the big independents.) Kelly needs to win, or he’s going to lose his job. That’s how it goes.
He’s either naive (unlikely) or arrogant (more likely), but neither of those things matter as much as winning.
4-8 seasons aren’t good regardless of program. At Notre Dame, though, they’re especially damaging, especially considering Kelly isn’t exactly a beloved figure off the field.
