In Brian Kelly’s mind, there are two options for how to look at the uncertainty surrounding the 2020 college football season.
Assume the worst, or think positive thoughts.
He is gripping the latter.
“I choose to think in the most positive terms that we’ll have this pandemic under control where we can resume, in some sort of normalcy, college football in the fall,” Kelly said Wednesday in an interview on 96.1 WSBT. “If anyone can predict what will happen next week, they should be in the stock market.”
It’s no surprise, then, that he followed with an admonishment of Kirk Herbstreit’s March 27 comments. The ESPN analyst said would be “shocked” and “so surprised” if there is a football season this fall.
“Kirk does not know what he’s talking about,” Kelly said. “I mean, really? For him to talk in those terms, he’s not a scientist. He’s a college football analyst. We’ll let the scientists determine those things.
“We’ll prepare and know what we need to do and put things in place knowing full well we need some preparation time. We’re going to stay positive and prepare as if we’re going to have a season.”
For now, with no concrete date for reconvening in South Bend, Kelly and his assistants have to control the team remotely while everyone is spread across the country, or in early enrollee freshman Alexander Ehrensberger’s case, across the Atlantic Ocean in Germany. And while spring practice has been canceled and conditioning is on hold, the coaching staff wants the players doing something to stay in shape.
Notre Dame players are in their hometowns with limited infrastructure to do workouts. Gyms are closed. Practice fields are closed. Throwing the ball with a friend is discouraged. Not everyone has a bench press in the garage or dumbbell set in the basement.
“If they have the ability to lift weights in their home, they can supplement some of the things within our resistance band workouts that [strength] coach [Matt] Balis has put together,” Kelly said.
Each player was sent three resistance bands and daily workouts to do with them. When players finish a workout, they log it on the “Strength Builder” app. Every player and coach downloaded the app, so coaches can track workouts and players can hold each other accountable.
“[It] allows our players to use their phones to complete their workout and send them to us,” Kelly said. “We get daily full workouts completed so we can track the progress of our players.”
Discussion around scheme, technique or anything else involving actual football will come up later.
“We have never entered into this realm of online teaching before. It’s new territory,” Kelly said. “It’s invigorating because we’re usually in a hands-on position with our student-athletes.
“It’s really been about structure. Next week, we’ll begin individual meetings and position meetings talking football.”
Kelly reaffirmed a stance he took in a March 25 appearance on SportsCenter, where he said the team needed to be back on campus and doing in-person conditioning workouts by July 1 if they wanted to be safely prepared to start the season Aug. 29 against Navy. Ideally, he’d hope for the all-clear to report back in mid-June. July 1 is the “drop-dead” date.
“We have to start working out by July 1,” Kelly said. “That’s important for us to get our guys in a conditioning manner to play football.”
Quick Hitters
On injuries:
“We have five players who have been worked on in terms of interaction and 12 total guys who are doing some form of PT. Nobody is in a critical kind of care scenario where they’re missing an apparatus or piece of machinery that is necessary for them to get their work.”
On recruiting and the 2021 class:
“We want them to complete the recruiting cycle. We’ve put in a lot of time, a lot of effort building relationships. We don’t want them to say of a sudden, ‘We’re ready to make a decision.’ Unless of course, it’s Notre Dame. Then we’re all for it.
“But if they’re saying, ‘Listen, if we’re ready to make a decision on another school and we haven’t seen Notre Dame,’ we’re obviously saying complete the recruiting process. Let it play out. Don’t make a decision under duress with the uncertainty of the times. This will pass.”
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