Engel: Brian Kelly’s LSU ‘alignment’ praise a cause for Irish introspection
Brian Kelly needed 29 seconds to bring up the word of the day at his Wednesday introduction as LSU’s head coach.
Alignment.
His new bosses, LSU president William Tate IV and athletics director Scott Woodward, had already uttered it in their welcoming remarks. Kelly, in succession, broadcast to the world the basis of his decision to leave Notre Dame after 12 seasons for LSU.
“This is so much about alignment,” Kelly said, clad in a purple suit and tie. “For me, alignment relative to this university, the goals, what’s in store for LSU athletics as a university, that’s what the draw is for me.”
Over the next 30 minutes, the nine-letter word flowed freely. If you had a dollar for every time Kelly said it, you might have enough money to match his new $95 million contract.
The thing is, Kelly touted that A-word (no, not the one Notre Dame fans have surely hurled his way) as a reason Notre Dame reached a consistency not seen in 30 years.
He brought up alignment between himself, athletic director Jack Swarbrick and President Fr. John Jenkins this offseason as one reason why they could woo defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman away from LSU’s reported $2 million per year offer. He mentioned it after he tied Notre Dame’s career wins record following a Sept. 18 win over Purdue.
“It requires consistency to get to these marks,” he said then. “We have it with our leadership, our athletic director, and we’ve had it in the coaching because we have alignment.”
In that same answer, he noted how rival USC did not have it in light of firing yet another head coach. LSU’s last several years aren’t a bastion of functionality either.
There are natural follow-up questions in hindsight. Did Kelly feel LSU’s alignment was superior to Notre Dame’s? Was he simply overstating Notre Dame’s alignment all along? Did something crash it in recent weeks?
Kelly pushed back on the idea his move was about viewing Notre Dame’s ceiling as lower than LSU’s. At the same time, he repeatedly touted LSU’s “resources” and said he “came down here because I wanted to be with the best.”
And there’s the spark for the biggest question surrounding his sudden split for the South.
Why did the winningest coach in Notre Dame history who recently built a house a block from campus, who was thriving in a job that has previously consumed coaches by Year 12, who helped usher in needed recruiting growth, who seven days earlier said he couldn’t see himself leaving aside from retirement, throw away his legacy and bolt for a new job that gave him an appreciable but still matchable raise?
Perhaps Kelly really did want a new challenge or would have selfishly left six days before the College Football Playoff field unveiling if Notre Dame was ranked in the top four. Those would be difficult obstacles for Notre Dame to work around. He did, though, have a challenge left at Notre Dame: push the program from annual CFP contender to national championship winner. It seems he had less interest in the latter than the former.
That reality ought to make Notre Dame look in the mirror and engage in some introspection, because in that light, it’s hard not to see this sudden departure as a university failure, to a degree. Why, then, was Notre Dame unable to nip the “restlessness” athletic director Jack Swarbrick saw in Kelly this year in the bud?
Swarbrick, after all, has previously stated his intent to ensure Kelly retires at Notre Dame. Even at his LSU introduction, Kelly admitted he didn’t think there “would have been any hinderances” if he ended his career as the Irish’s head coach.
But that leads to another why. Specifically, why did Kelly gush about LSU’s resources if he saw no limit at Notre Dame?
Furthermore, does that inspire much confidence in Swarbrick’s assertion that there “wasn’t distance between” he and Kelly regarding facility and amenity upgrades?
Sports Illustrated reported Monday Kelly’s move was rooted in “a weariness with trying to move Notre Dame farther off its entrenched philosophy for where and how football fits within the university mission.” The Athletic college football insider Bruce Feldman said on a Tuesday episode of “The Audible” podcast that Notre Dame’s training table setup, lack of a team chef and football offices lag behind other blue-blood college football programs.
Those are non-negligible facility components and not bank-breakers to support. Notre Dame already spent big on indoor facility and stadium renovations, after all. Hearing Kelly’s LSU resources love affair should force Notre Dame to ask itself what it wants to do. Is it aligned on taking final steps toward championship contention, or is it OK with being very good but still a step behind the few true elites?
That doesn’t mean ditching the admission standards, team mass and residency requirements, for example. Those will always be among the reasons Notre Dame stands as a unique blue blood. Resources shouldn’t be one. Swarbrick, in fairness, pointed out instances of where they weren’t an issue.
“I think we have the best indoor football facility in the country,” Swarbrick said. “Most of the NFL scouts who come in make that same observation. That was a major investment we made. We’ve made investments in our other practice fields, made investments in the building itself, we redid all the offices last year.
"It's a matter of continuing those. We’ll always be updating the weight room. We’ll always be updating the locker room. At some point in the not-too-distant future, we have to figure out how to most effectively expand or change the footprint for the football operations building.”
All that, though, doesn’t change the subtext of Kelly’s initial comments as LSU coach: LSU’s ceiling is exceeded by none and Notre Dame’s is a bit lower.
If Notre Dame is indeed serious about being a true title contender, it must make clear that its own potential matches the Tigers’. When LSU’s president begins the introductory press conference by touting how his school was the first since 1907 to pry away Notre Dame’s head coach, one wonders if the Irish have work to do to help ensure their operation — and alignment — is viewed that way.
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