For Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly, Friday’s game at No. 25 North Carolina (6-2) is one of those full-circle moments when he faces Mack Brown, who began his head coaching career back in 1983 at Appalachian State.
In January 2003, the two first crossed paths on the sidelines in the Hula Bowl when Brown’s North staff included Western Kentucky’s Jack Harbaugh and Grand Valley State’s Kelly — the winners of the NCAA Division I-AA and Division II national titles, respectively, that season.
“These guys just won national championships, so it will be great to spend some time with them and watch them work,” Brown said of Harbaugh and Kelly at the time.
“What I've always respected about him is he always had time for the guy that was coming up in the ranks,” Kelly said this week about his first impressions of Brown.
At the time, Brown was coming off back-to-back 11-2 seasons and top-six rankings as the head coach of the Texas Longhorns — but was also perceived as a head coach “who can take you far, but not quite to the summit.”
Meanwhile, Kelly’s first 10 seasons at Grand Valley State from 1991-2000 somewhat mirrored his first 10 at Notre Dame from 2010-19. He was the proverbial “good, solid head coach who can’t get over the hump” — sort of like the Andy Reid of college football, until Reid himself won the Super Bowl last February.
In his first 10 seasons with the Lakers, Kelly was 77-33-2 for a .696 winning percentage, but had three times lost in the first round of the Division II playoffs.
At Notre Dame, Kelly was 92-37 his first 10 seasons, twice taking the Irish to championship or playoff action and coming close another time in 2015, but not quite yet getting to the penthouse suite.
Then in 2001 (year 11) at GVS, Kelly made it to the championship before losing and finishing 13-1 — and in 2002 and 2003 he won consecutive national titles while posting a 28-1 overall record. Once that program found its legs under Kelly, it became a dynasty.
At Notre Dame, Kelly's Fighting Irish program is knocking on the door again for a title, while fashioning a glittering 31-3 record the past three years and currently owning the nation’s longest winning streak at 14, highlighted by a conquest of No. 1 Clemson Nov. 7. The program is brimming with confidence and supreme physicality.
Meanwhile, second-year Tar Heels head coach Brown, who turned 69 in August, is one of only six active coaches in the Football Bowl Subdivision who have won a national title at this level.
Nick Saban (Alabama), Dabo Swinney (Clemson) and Ed Orgeron (LSU) are the only ones at their current schools, while Brown (Texas in 2005), Kansas’ Les Miles (LSU in 2007) and Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher (Florida State in 2013) achieved it elsewhere.
Back when Kelly was hired as Notre Dame’s head coach in 2010, the coach he reminded us most of was Brown — and the two currently possess the most head coaching experience in college football.
Both are renowned as personable program builders who also are highly polished with the media, with Brown serving as a studio analyst at ABC from 2014-18.
In his first seven years at Texas from 1998-2004, Brown rebuilt the Longhorns into a consistent top-five to top-15 program but was castigated as the coach who “can’t win the big one” (especially versus Oklahoma), until capturing the national title in 2005 to end a 36-year drought in Austin.
Kelly has done similar work at Notre Dame, especially the last four years, and won a “big one” this month versus No. 1 Clemson, putting the Irish into the national title picture for at least the third time in the last nine seasons.
Is the best still to come from Kelly?
Brown also led Texas to the 2009 national title game before losing to Alabama. The Longhorns needed a last-second field goal in the Big 12 championship game to knock out Kelly’s 12-0 Cincinnati team from playing for the national championship versus Alabama that season. Shortly thereafter, Kelly accepted the Notre Dame position.
Kelly’s upward mobility to Notre Dame coincided with Brown’s downward trend at Texas from 2010-13 when his teams finished 5-7, 8-5, 9-4 and 8-5 before he resigned.
Inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2018, Brown returned to coaching in 2019 at North Carolina, where he flourished from 1988-97 and steered the Tar Heels to consecutive top-10 finishes his last two seasons before taking the Texas job.
“For both of us, it's been our consistency in our approach, day in and day out, being who we are, You can see that in who Mack is and what's important to him and what's important to me,” Kelly said. “Day in and day out, doing the things that we've done for so long, and not really coming off that very far. I have a ton of respect for Mack. He’s been a great mentor to me in a lot of ways.”
Unlike many of his coaching brethren in both football and basketball, Brown lauded Notre Dame joining the ACC full-time in football for at least the 2020 season and did not take the popular “either you’re fully with us, or get out” stance.
“It’s great for them this year, and it’s great for us,” Brown said this August. “Because they needed some extra help in scheduling, and anytime you add Notre Dame to your league it’s a great brand,. They do it right, they play by the rules, they’re a great team.
“Brian Kelly does a tremendous job, and he’s a friend of mine. This is a win-win. They will also bring some TV money, it sounds like, into the league. All of us are needing that right now.”
Just like North Carolina needed Brown again, and Notre Dame needed Kelly in December 2009.
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