It was only a matter of time before someone asked former head coach Brian Kelly about the Fighting Irish being in the national championship after he infamously left Notre Dame mid-recruiting visit for an easier path to a championship. Three years later, the current LSU head coach is trying to rewrite history on his departure by backtracking on numerous statements he made following his exit from Notre Dame.
“I wasn’t leaving Notre Dame because I couldn’t win a championship. You can win championships at Notre Dame, but I chose another path because I wanted a different challenge.” Brian Kelly told CBS Sports in a lengthy interview in which he tried to rewrite the history of why he left Notre Dame now that the Irish are on the doorsteps of potentially ending the 36-year national championship he failed to end during his 12-year stint as head coach of the Fighting Irish.
Kelly is now claiming that the media has twisted his words even though he said numerous times that he left for LSU because he wanted to be someplace where he had the “alignment” and “resources” to win a national championship. The problem is that he said it in interviews, he said it on social media clips, and he said it in videos LSU posted during Kelly’s first interactions with his new team in December 2021.
Additionally, in interviews during the spring of 2022, Kelly said that he had taken Notre Dame as far as he could and that he and the program were on “different paths.” To his credit, he was right about that. Notre Dame’s path has led the Irish to the national championship game. His path has led him to 11 losses in three years at a program where it was supposed to be easier to win. Kelly also complained about a lack of new facilities and a dedicated chef in an AP article discussing why he left. Notre Dame announced plans for state-of-the-art facilities earlier this year and has miraculously made it to a championship game appearance before completion.
No one is twisting his words. He made it clear that he felt he could win a national championship easier at LSU. Three years later, Notre Dame is playing for a national championship while the team he left for finished the regular season 8-4 with an 0-2 record against common opponents with Notre Dame. The Tigers did finish the year with a win in the prestigious Kinder’s Texas Bowl, though, ending his third season with a 9-4 record. They don’t call him “Big Game Brian” for nothing. The nine wins for LSU this year were the fewest of his time at LSU.
To his credit, Brian Kelly did a lot of good during his time at Notre Dame. He pulled the Irish out of a rough patch and back into relevance after three straight failed head coaching tenures from Bob Davie, Tyrone Willingham, and Charlie Weis. He also rebuilt the roster at Notre Dame to a place where it was deeper than it had been before his arrival, although the narrative amongst LSU fans currently that Notre Dame was devoid ofbeforeent prior to Kelly’s arrival and that he left Notre Dame with any sort of stacked roster is more revisionist history. Notre Dame would not have had to rely on transfers at wide receiver and quarterback as much as they have the last two years if Kelly had done his job in his final two years at Notre Dame.
At the same time, Kelly never had answers in big games for the Irish, instead usually offering excuses such as having to shop down a different aisle at Notre Dame. His successor, who Kelly ironically hired as his defensive coordinator despite a desperate pitch from LSU for the same role in 2021, hasn’t made those same excuses and has already delivered more big wins for the program than Kelly had in 12 years.
Between the Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl, Marcus Freeman guided Notre Dame to more wins over top-5 ranked (ranked, not seeded) teams in the span of 8 days than Kelly did in 12 years as head coach at Notre Dame. Brian Kelly finished his Notre Dame tenure with a 1-17 record against top-5 opponents – the lone win coming in 2020 against Clemson. Freeman is now 3-1 in such contests, with the lone loss being in the first game of his first season as a head coach at the very same Ohio State Buckeyes team that now stands in the way of Notre Dame ending its lone championship drought.
Kelly also shamelessly tried to take a little credit for the position Notre Dame is in. “A lot of the guys there that are on both sides of the ball, I recruited. Obviously, I want to see those guys win it all,” Kelly also said in the interview. Four players on the current offensive depth chart and four on the defensive depth chart signed with the Irish while Kelly was there. That’s a total of 8 out of 55 players. This does not count any junior since none of the juniors had signed before Kelly bolted to LSU. His abrupt and cowardly departure in the middle of the night with Notre Dame still alive for the playoffs made keeping that recruiting class together extremely difficult at the 11th hour.
That is just par for the course with Brian Kelly, though. He loves to take credit for the good and always has excuses for why the bad wasn’t his fault.
A good and balanced view of the BK years. Yes, he was an improvement over the D/D/W years (though that’s not saying much). ND started to win most of the games we were supposed to win, not withstanding 2016 and a few exceptions. We could even make it to the ‘big’ games, like the NC in 2012, playoff games and NY 6 Bowl Games some years. The problem was we could not beat elite teams. We constantly got beat, many times embarrassed.
And there was almost coaching malpractice of our QB’s. How many QB’s did we have under BK that we were told was going to be the one to win it all? How many times did we hear, finally, this QB is perfect for BK’s system or style. EG, Malik Zaire, Wimbush, etc. etc. etc. Even Kizer, who was arguably one of our tougher QB’s, despite BK, coudn’t over the hump under BK. I wonder how many of those QB’s would have excelled with a different QB. Undoubtedly some were duds. But I can’t believe all were. I think of EG for instance. He was one of the few bright spots in our NC game against Alabama in 2012. He was one of the few that looked hungry and didn’t look shell shocked. One of the few that actually seemed to be trying to generate something. Flamed out after that. Was that because he was overrated, or was it bad coaching?
In a way I’m grateful to LSU for saving us from BK. Because honestly I don’t think ND was ever going to pull the plug on him. We are where we are today despite him, not because of anything he did.