Vote Of Confidence ‘Disappointing’ For Notre Dame’s Brian Kelly

With a 2-5 start to Notre Dame’s 2016 football season, there were probably a share of Fighting Irish faithful who were disillusioned about university vice president and director of athletics Jack Swarbrick telling ESPN.com last Friday that head coach Brian Kelly would be leading the team out of the tunnel again in 2017.

However, there maybe was no one more disappointed by that statement than Kelly himself. Of course, it’s not because he doesn’t want to coach Notre Dame anymore.

For some followers of a team, a public endorsement from the AD is often viewed as “the kiss of death.” For a coach, it can be embarrassing. It can be akin to a child being picked on in school — and his mother rushing in to save him.

“Anytime that your athletics director has to come out and say that, as a head coach you’re disappointed that any kind of comments like that have to be made,” said the candid Kelly, who celebrated his 55th birthday on Tuesday.

Kelly, who has a 57-28 (.671 winning percentage) career record at Notre Dame — but is only 14-13 in his last 27 contests, and 2-7 in his last nine — said it was a decision Swarbrick made on his own to halt rumors or speculation that the seventh-year Irish head coach was sitting on the hot seat.

“I didn’t ask him,” Kelly said of Swarbrick going to bat for him publicly. “That was his decision. I clearly understand what he was doing. He was probably sick and tired of being sick and tired, too.

“But for me, it’s disappointing, certainly, that you have to make those comments.”

The Irish head coach joked with media members that he spent his time during the bye week “on the beach” and honing his golf game. Most of his time actually was spent in quality control, including self-scouting work, while also doing some recruiting. He said his priorities are more on rectifying the present than mortgaging the future. When asked how much frustration has settled in, he said that would be just wasted energy.

“I don’t know that I spend a lot of time on the word ‘frustration’ as much as looking for solutions to sometimes rather complex and difficult solutions,” Kelly said. “When I say ‘complex,’ I don’t mean things that can’t be accomplished, but that take time. We don’t have time. Nobody has time in our society. Nobody has time, if you’re an annoyed fan, to wait for us. I get that. I’m not here to be in front of anybody to ask for time.

“But I don’t think frustrated. It’s just you have to be, every single day, clear on your communication and what you want to accomplish. Sometimes you have to make sure, check yourself and your staff, that they avoid all the noise, because there’s a lot of noise around this place.”

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