On a frigid January afternoon, roughly a week after his third NFL season had wrapped up, Chicago Bears tight end Cole Kmet moved into a 1,000-square foot apartment in South Bend, Ind., with younger brother Casey and trudged off to a college classroom a few days later for the first time in more than three years.
Heads turned, as his classmates only briefly struggled to figure out who the “tall kid” was. Then it became normal quickly for both sides. And part of the sustained normalcy for the 6-foot-6, 260-pound 24-year-old was making a 2 ½-hour workout at Notre Dame’s Guglielmino Athletics Complex part of his post-class routine.
Mostly Kmet encountered only director of football performance Matt Balis’ assistant strength coaches during that part of his school day ay ND's football facility, but one day he actually crossed paths with Balis himself in the Gug weight room — and his signature rasp.
“Usually I worked out in the late afternoon,” Kmet said this week. “But I walked in one morning, and he was barking. And it was music to my ears.”
On Sunday, it’s Kmet’s mom, Kandace’s, turn to hear the music and witness what a kept promise looks like when the Political Science major picks up his Notre Dame degree.
“She’s very excited,” Cole said. “And to be honest, so am I.”
Following Kmet’s junior season in 2019, he left Notre Dame to enter the 2020 NFL Draft without his degree but vowing, to Kandace in particular, to return someday. In 1989, the NFL first opened its doors to players three years removed from high school to legally wade into the draft pool as early entries. Kmet became No. 18 from ND to go three-and-out.
That number swelled to 22 this past spring, when junior All-America tight end Michael Mayer became the latest.
At the conclusion of Kmet’s sophomore football season just four of Notre Dame’s true junior early draft entries had come back to complete their unfinished academic business — wide receiver/return ace Rocket Ismail (1994), cornerback Tom Carter (1995), running back Darius Walker (2007) and quarterback Jimmy Clausen (2013).
But that 2019 spring semester that followed, then-head coach Brian Kelly, then-director of football administration Beth Rex, and Adam Sargent concocted a plan and began aggressively recruiting the three-and-out Irish to come back.
Sargent is ND’s associate director of academic services for student-athletes as well as the academic counselor for football and has maintained the program after Kelly and Rex left for LSU following the 2021 season.
That spring of 2019, when Kmet was finishing up his sophomore year academically and moonlighting as a star pitcher on the Irish baseball team, tight end Troy Niklas, running back Josh Adams and linebacker Jaylon Smith all were enrolled in school as the first wave of Kelly’s vision took hold.
“If we’re going to talk the talk, we need to walk the walk,” Kelly said at the time. “And now these guys are walking it, too.
“Each one of them is motivated in different ways. But I think at the end of the day, it’s finishing what they started and then recognizing the value of the Notre Dame degree and the power of it. Those two things have been pretty much what has driven most of these guys.”
Smith, with a seven-course, 21-hour credit load, finished that spring and became the first of seven since the spring of ’19 to do so. Adams, Niklaus and Julian Love did so in 2020. Stephon Tuitt and Jerome Bettis were the 2022 grads, with the latter doing so three decades after his final college season.
And now Kmet.
Former All-America safety Kyle Hamilton, who completed his rookie season with the Baltimore Ravens in January, started his post-draft academic journey this spring semester and hopes to be next delayed graduate.
“I’d like to think I would have done it anyways, but when you see all those guys — like Jaylon, Josh and Troy — come back, it definitely adds to it for sure,” said Kmet, a second-round draft choice of the Chicago Bears in 2020.
“I think I remember seeing all those guys in the locker room when I was playing, and hopefully Kyle and I did this past semester with those guys who may have the opportunity to leave early and see that, and feel inspired to come back and finish the thing out.”
The NFL Players Association has a reimbursement plan to incentivize players without degrees to go get them. What the NFL doesn’t cover financially, Notre Dame does. The one stipulation is players must come back to campus to finish.
Kmet, though, was offered a loophole after his rookie season in the spring of 2021. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was able to take online classes remotely that spring and again in the summer of 2021.
After skipping last spring, Kmet decided 2023 was time. Brother Casey, a senior on the Notre Dame baseball team, lost his roommate after the fall semester. Cole took his place and spent most of his free time either attending Casey’s baseball games or just hanging out with him.
“It was awesome and a lot of fun living with him,” Cole said. “I had some tough classes, but the whole experience was great. I made it to a couple of [Notre Dame spring] football practices right before the spring game, and I got to know [head coach] Marcus Freeman.
“Wow, he’s great. He’s brought a good, vibrant personality to the team. Kind of being able to see him coach at a couple of practices, he definitely gets on the guys in a much-needed way, but I know all the guys are fired up to play for him, and there are a lot of good things ahead.”
For Kmet too, he believes, whenever football ends.
This past year Kmet finished his third professional season with 50 catches for 544 yards and seven touchdowns.
“From year one, you’re just trying to swim and stay afloat in water,” he said. “And after year 1, you’re kind of feeling a little more comfortable. This past year, I felt the most comfortable I’ve been in the league and feel really good about what I was able to do.
“And now to have this experience and graduate from Notre Dame, I know I made my mom happy, but I made me happy, too. When I was considering coming back for my senior season, that degree was a big part of that thought process.
“It carries a lot of weight, I think. And now I can carry that with me.”
---------------------------------------------------------------
• Talk with Notre Dame fans on The Insider Lounge.
• Subscribe to the Inside ND Sports podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Podbean or Pocket Casts.
• Subscribe to the Inside ND Sports channel on YouTube.
• Follow us on Twitter: @insideNDsports, @EHansenND, @TJamesND and @cbowles01.
• Like us on Facebook: Inside ND Sports
• Follow us on Instagram: @insideNDsports
