5:29 on Monday- Matt texts the group text with some of my Notre Dame friends the link to the story about LSU going after Brian Kelly. We all agree that it would be bad to lose Brian Kelly, but it’s probably not something we have to worry about.
9:00 on Monday- I wake up from a nap to watch the Notre Dame basketball game. Matt had texted us the tweet that Kelly was leaving at 8:04. I spend the next hour reading stuff on the internet instead of watching the game.
That group text had various names when one of us realized that you could name group texts on iMessage. I remember one of them was Fire Van Gorder. It got renamed BK Forever at some point and it kept that name for years. It is not named BK Forever anymore.
Notre Dame dominated the month of November and surprisingly had a shot to get to the College Football Playoff and then our coach was gone. I was never the biggest Brian Kelly fan. The 2012 season was very fun, but then it seemed like a fluke the next few years. After 2016, I wanted him fired (and firing him would have been completely justified). But starting in 2017, we’ve been on our best extended run since 1988-1993. It got to a point where I had a begrudging acceptance of Brian Kelly. He was a very good football coach. He would win a lot of games and he was going to stay at Notre Dame for as long as he wanted to (and probably not win a National Championship). And then, shockingly, he was gone. Brian Kelly had rebuilt the program after deserving to be fired in 2016. And suddenly, the program was on the verge of collapse. We are about to sign a very good recruiting class, but that could have easily fallen apart. Players could have transferred in droves. If the assistant coaches went with Kelly to LSU, things would have gotten bad really fast at Notre Dame. This is what is happening at Oklahoma right now. But it is not happening at Notre Dame.
Kelly was gone on Monday and then Jack Swarbrick gave a not particularly inspiring press conference on Tuesday. It was a rough spot for Swarbrick. You had a team that had a really good season that has a chance of going to the College Football Playoff that didn’t have a head coach anymore. Who was going to coach the bowl game? Who was going to be the head coach next season? It wasn’t clear if both of those questions had the same answer. Luke Fickell was probably the best candidate of anybody with head coaching experience, but we would have to wait for him with Cincinnati trying to get to the College Football Playoff (you know, unless Luke Fickell pulled a Brian Kelly). If you wait, you might have assistant coaches jumping at other job opportunities.
It was hard to feel good about Notre Dame football. And then Wednesday happened. We found out that strength and conditioning coach Matt Balis was staying. Then we found out that Tommy Rees was staying as offensive coordinator. That didn’t make any sense unless they knew who the head coach was. It became clear that Marcus Freeman was getting the job. More assistants were staying on. It got to a point where every assistant coach that I would have wanted to keep announced that they were staying. There are a few that we don’t know about yet, but I won’t be too sad to see them go. And Wednesday night also gave us Brian Kelly’s fake Southern accent at LSU’s basketball game. Twitter was lots of fun with the players supporting the assistant coaches and all the reactions to all the news about the assistants staying.
Marcus Freeman was officially announced as the new head coach on Friday morning. Everybody loves this guy. The players were so happy for him to be taking over.
He’s been at Notre Dame for 11 months and he gets Notre Dame better than Brian Kelly ever did in 12 years. I never thought that I would support hiring somebody without previous head coaching experience (it hasn’t worked at Notre Dame), but it became clear that Freeman was the right choice. It’s a bit of a gamble, but it’s worth it. There would have been an immediate step back with anybody else (between transfers and the recruiting class falling apart) and if Freeman can successfully transition from being a great defensive coordinator and recruiter into being a great head coach, this will definitely give us the chance to win a National Championship. He’s definitely the type of person I want representing Notre Dame.
I would love to know the whole story behind Kelly leaving. I initially thought it had to be just money. But there’s been talk that he thinks he has a better chance to win a National Championship at LSU. That seemed strange with Notre Dame possibly making the playoff this year and a good recruiting class coming in next year and with LSU being in the same SEC division as Alabama, but maybe Kelly thought that if Ed Orgeron could win a National Championship there, anybody could do it.
After everything that’s happened this week, I expect this team to be the most motivated Notre Dame team since Lou Holtz was the coach. If things break right tomorrow (hopefully Alabama and Michigan will lose, but Oklahoma State and Cincinnati losing would be good also), we can make it to the College Football Playoff. I’m not saying that we would beat Georgia (they’re loaded defensively), but I feel like we have a better chance with Freeman coaching the team than we did with Kelly because of the motivation that this week has given the team. It’s been a weird college football season and it would be a perfect ending to have Marcus Freeman lead Notre Dame to the National Championship in his first two games as head coach. It’s a long shot, but it’s not impossible.
