In a way, operating a massive college football program remotely amid a pandemic reminds Brian Kelly of his time as the head coach of Grand Valley State under normal circumstances.
Division II programs in the 1990s and early 2000s had fewer full-time staffers. At one point, Kelly had two full-time assistants. Players were not on campus for all but a few weeks of the year or required to be at some kind of practice or workout most days like they are now.
The situation required Kelly to put faith in his players to handle their business when he or his assistants weren’t nearby.
All these years later, entering his 11th season at Notre Dame, he’s in a similar spot because of COVID-19.
Notre Dame’s players are sprinkled across the country, away from campus and all the structure student-athlete life brings, due to campus closures and canceled practices. No weight rooms or practice fields are open. Teammates aren’t down the hall or in the same apartment. College sports is currently a virtual concept built on players’ and coaches’ own drive to move it along. The teams that have the most collective accountability will emerge from this with lower potential for speed bumps.
“We’re doing a lot of things that bring us back to the days where we had to rely on our players to be self-motivated,” Kelly said Wednesday on a Zoom press conference. “We’re giving them guidance, there’s no doubt. But we can’t be mandating workouts. We have to trust that we have good leadership, which we do, with our players. We’re giving them the opportunity to consult with us.
“This is a bit old-school from our perspective.”
All told, Kelly and his staff own less control. For football coaches used to planning out nearly every hours of their players’ days, the idea of players needing to remind themselves to complete workouts, schoolwork and show up for Zoom meetings can be a scary thought.
As if that wasn’t enough, there’s little coaches can do besides wagging their fingers to ensure that players area adhering to recommendations about social distancing. On that, Kelly revealed no Notre Dame player has tested positive for COVID-19 and he’s pleased with their effort to be responsible citizens.
“Control is sometimes used in a negative connotation,” Kelly said. “We like the structure because structure is what our players want on a day-to-day basis. More than anything else, it’s trying to get that structure in a distance environment.”
Notre Dame’s measures to create it are to Kelly’s liking, enough for him to admit he can rest easy at night, unafraid his program is burning down without him or his staff around. First up is monitoring academics and helping players along with setting up routines for their studies. It’s a full-staff effort, with assistant coaches more involved in academic help than ever before.
“Adam Sargent, who heads our academic support staff for football, has been fabulous for putting together a comprehensive plan for all of our players,” Kelly said. “We’re sharing that plan on a weekly conference call where he is in constant communication with all our players and position coaches. This has become so much more of a decentralized operation where all our position coaches are involved with Adam and assisting with any issues that may arise. That simply could be not having proper WiFi or making sure they’re organized in their daily schedule.”
Then there’s the matter of recreating spring practice and conditioning as best as possible – an exercise in futility when there are no facilities open, few players have personal equipment on par with a college weight room and position groups cannot congregate to practice together.
Notre Dame’s strength staff, led by director of sports performance Matt Balis, sent each player three resistance bands and accompanying workouts to do with them. Team nutritionist Kari Oliver does daily check-ins with players to “see where they are … who needs good meals, who’s lacking.”
There’s one catch: the NCAA, in a document released to schools in early April, said staff members “cannot supervise or conduct such workouts” and that players can’t report them to coaches. They’re essentially voluntary.
Each offseason since Balis arrived in 2017, Notre Dame establishes “SWAT teams” and assigns a group of about eight leaders to draft players. Normally, these are designed to create competition in all offseason activity, from workouts to communal involvement to academics, and a winner is declared at the end of each offseason based on a point system. Now, those team leaders have assumed another role: keeping their team members in line and checking on their progress without it feeling like constant nagging.
“We don’t want to put them in position to be big brother all the time,” Kelly said. “We want it to be a program builder. It’s that fine balance and making sure they keep the players on their team to their standard, but also rewarding them. That’s been our focus in the last week or so. Rewarding guys who have been doing a great job. … This is not about disciplining someone that misses a Zoom conference.”
Each position group holds meetings over Zoom. This is where actual football, X’s and O’s are discussed. Kelly said Notre Dame has done some offensive and defensive installation that has added to the playbooks. They can watch film on Zoom together. Notre Dame won’t be able to practice any plays until fall camp (if that starts on time), but Kelly saw install as important to do in the spring as usual so as not to add more items to fall camp, which he sees having more of a team-building emphasis than normal because of the time spent apart this spring.
Kelly’s sense, though, is that there has been no unraveling of bonds or commitment. Accountability is present.
“We’re a lot more efficient,” Kelly said. “We can do a lot more from a remote location than we ever could before. That’s the biggest thing. We’re an adaptable creature in a sense. We can find ways to get through the most difficult times.
“And as long as we’re disciplined and we stay on this course, we’re going to get through this and learn from it.”
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