Column: Brian Kelly’s selfish bailout as Notre Dame coach spoils his legacy
Notre Dame director of athletics Jack Swarbrick said Tuesday morning that he was not informed of Brian Kelly’s decision to dip out on Notre Dame and head to LSU until Monday night, but he wasn’t surprised by the move either … even if the rest of the college football world sure as hell was.
“There’s just a sense you get when you work closely with somebody for 12 years that there’s a certain restlessness, and I could sense that,” Swarbrick said, “I have contemplated for some period of time that there had to be an endpoint coming.”
Given the covert approach to Kelly’s here-today, gone-tomorrow money-grab departure, Swarbrick managed to stay respectful and said all the right things about his former employee, an impressive gesture, given the embarrassing circumstances and selfish timing of Kelly’s move.
“Look, 12 years is a really long time at Notre Dame,” Swarbrick said. “We were incredibly well served to have Brian here for that period of time.”
Coaches move on, no secret there. They want new challenges, they want more money, they want a fresh start, they want an ego boost, they want a chance to reach greater heights, and Kelly believes LSU provides all of those.
But did it have to go down like this?
It’s not that Brian Kelly left Notre Dame, it’s how he left Notre Dame.
Divorce is always messy and the timing of a coaching separation is never ideal.
But when Kelly added LSU colors and the caption “CALLIN’ BATON ROUGE” to his Twitter account before he even met with his current players Tuesday morning, it provided a glimpse and an uneasiness into how the coach thinks and operates.
Though, it shouldn’t surprise given that Kelly took the same course in 2009 when he jetted with no warning from Cincinnati to Notre Dame a few weeks before the Bearcats were set to play in the Sugar Bowl.
Interestingly, Kelly was actually asked only about a week ago if he’d ever consider leaving Notre Dame before his contract expired in 2024.
“No,” he said, adding, “unless that fairy godmother comes by with a $250 million check.”
Multiple outlets report Kelly’s contract with LSU is worth $95 million over 10 years, so not fairy godmother money, but certainly fairy-tale money.
As one of only six teams still under consideration for the College Football Playoff, the Irish (11-1) will find out their postseason fate on Dec. 5, presumably while operating without a head coach.
It’s hard to imagine the chaos and carnage that Kelly left behind won’t become a talking point when the College Football Playoff committee discusses Notre Dame’s worthiness of an invite.
Only four days ago, following the 45-14 win Saturday over Stanford in the regular-season finale, Kelly proclaimed: “We’ve got one of the best four teams in my mind in the country, without question, and we’re ready to prove it.”
Instead, the 60-year-old Kelly will be introduced in Baton Rouge in a few hours, wearing a purple necktie, while proclaiming that coaching LSU in the mighty SEC has always been his dream job.
And, as if Kelly didn’t already do enough damage through his slimy program abandonment 1,000 miles up north, multiple reports indicate that he’s trying to take Irish defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman and offensive coordinator Tommy Rees with him.
If you’re going to burn down a bridge, you may as well burn down everything the bridge connects you to.
Then, there’s the task for the holdover Irish coaches of holding together the 22-player 2022 recruiting class — ranked No. 4 by Rivals — who are set to sign their letters of intent during the three-day early signing period that begins on Dec. 15.
Again, leaving Notre Dame was Kelly’s right, but the callous indifference that he showed to his players, his staff, his recruits and the entire program was not right.
Veteran Notre Dame reporter Matt Fortuna tweeted out an update Monday night that explained how one Irish assistant coach he spoke with saw and read the LSU reports on his cellphone while leaving a recruit’s home. “The news broke when I walked out of the house, so I look like a f------ a--hole,” the post read, in part.
After 12 seasons on the job and for the sake of a relatively smooth transition, Kelly owed his players and program some openness and transparency with this decision, instead of the same disloyalty, phoniness, secrecy, dishonesty and cowardliness he used when flirting with the Philadelphia Eagles before and after the 2012 BCS National Championship Game.
When Kelly beat Wisconsin on Sept. 25, and passed Knute Rockne as Notre Dame’s all-time winningest coach, I argued that even without a national title, Kelly had built up enough respect, equity and success to deserve his own statue outside of Notre Dame Stadium, one to sit alongside the five Irish coaches who did win titles.
Well, scrap that idea, maybe instead, he can work on a design for one outside of Tiger Stadium … if he can find a way to finally beat Nick Saban.
----
• Learn more about our print and digital publication, Blue & Gold Illustrated.
• Watch our videos and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
• Sign up for Blue & Gold's news alerts and daily newsletter.
• Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts.
• Follow us on Twitter: @BGINews, @MikeTSinger, @PatrickEngel_, @tbhorka, @GregLadky, and @ToddBurlage.
• Like us on Facebook.