SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Walk inside Notre Dame football’s practice facility, and former Irish head coach Brian Kelly is there in name only. To the left of the double doors that open into the football expanse is a list of the more than two dozen donors who helped fund a project, completed in 2019, that Kelly demanded be built. Kelly was among the benefactors. Consider it a parting gift from the school’s all-time wins leader.
But on Sunday night, Kelly gave Notre Dame something much bigger.
You’ve probably heard that LSU fired Kelly in the wake of a disastrous home loss to Texas A&M. Tiger Stadium chanted for the head coach’s termination. The fan base somehow turned toxic and apathetic in unison, no matter how at odds those sentiments may seem. Kelly has never cared whether he was seen as a hero or a villain, but nobody can survive being a punchline. And college football was laughing with every sideline shot of Kelly in apoplectic agony.
It would be easy to say the joke is on Kelly today, but Notre Dame and LSU have made him a rich man. If the Tigers pay Kelly’s full buyout instead of forcing him to negotiate it down, the bill would be north of $50 million. That’s how much LSU wanted Kelly to go away during a season that has spiraled from dreaming of a national championship to wondering whether Kelly would agree to take a mayonnaise bath or be doused in Cheez-It crackers during bowl season.
Kelly’s dismissal in Baton Rouge ends a death race between Notre Dame and its former coach of 12 years. Both parties were desperate to be right about the events of December 2021, when Kelly bolted Notre Dame for the SEC while the Irish were still in the running to make the four-team College Football Playoff. The Irish finished one slot short of the field, promoted Marcus Freeman and hoped for the best. But the transition marked an existential crisis for Notre Dame, even if nobody wanted to admit it.
If Brian Kelly had won a title at LSU, it would have meant Notre Dame had been the problem all along. Maybe the small Catholic school in northern Indiana really was stuck in the past, unable to live in the era of name, image and likeness money and the transfer portal. Yes, Notre Dame’s best days are behind it, considering those days included the likes of Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy. Kelly’s move didn’t argue that point. But it said the damning part out loud: Notre Dame might not have much of a future, either.
For all the jokes and memes Kelly spawned — comically pounding the table to prove how angry he was after losing to USC, righteous indignation about being asked about his sputtering offense, complaining about beat reporters never giving him enough credit — those were all salves for something that still ate at Notre Dame, even after last year’s run to the national championship game. The LOLs might taste good, but they’re empty calories.
Because what if Kelly won?
Nobody needs to shudder at the thought any longer. That’s what makes his firing such a karmic exhale for Notre Dame.
Kelly lost. Lost too many games. Lost his reputation for having a horseshoe stuck in his coaching locker. Lost his distinction as having never been fired in 35 years as a head coach, a longevity Kelly referenced almost weekly. Lost the argument.
But this is different from saying Notre Dame won.
Former Irish athletic director Jack Swarbrick was willing to match Kelly’s offer from LSU in annual salary but not in its 10-year term. There’s a parallel universe where Kelly decides restarting in Baton Rouge isn’t worth the hassle, that it would be easier to golf into the sunset around South Bend. Freeman takes the Duke job after a single season with Notre Dame as defensive coordinator. The Irish keep winning 10 games a year, seasons without much soul, employing a kind of head coach that was starting to go extinct.
Instead, Kelly forced Notre Dame to gamble on Freeman, a wagon-circling that forced the school to back a first-time head coach despite an extensive program track record of first-time head coaches failing. Kelly’s jilting of Notre Dame made this place open its arms wider for Freeman than it had for any coach short of Lou Holtz, so wide the school stomached losses to Marshall and Northern Illinois. Kelly made Notre Dame desperate for Freeman to work. And Notre Dame gave Freeman every chance to make good.
Kelly dragged Notre Dame football forward during his dozen years in charge, including his recruitment of Freeman, beating out former LSU coach Ed Orgeron to bring in the defensive coordinator from Cincinnati. Kelly professionalized a program that kept tripping over its own shillelagh. He opened the door for a hire that may define a generation of Notre Dame football.
The Irish have one run through the CFP at their back under Freeman, with designs on another. Freeman has learned on the job, taking what Kelly built and upgrading virtually everything about it. One coach left because he didn’t get what he wanted. The other seems to want for nothing, including a new operations building set to open next year and an NIL budget that sits at the sport’s adults table.
“Coach Kelly gave me an opportunity to come here, and I’m always rooting for him,” Freeman said on Monday. “But it’s also the profession we’ve chosen. We’ve chosen this profession. We know that can be the result of choosing this profession.”
Kelly found out on Sunday night.
Notre Dame’s all-time wins leader got what he deserved at LSU. Now Brian Kelly is no longer an existential threat around here.
He’s just another name on the wall.
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