Brian Kelly unintentionally confirms what Notre Dame fans have known for years after his latest nearsighted comments
Former Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly thinks back to his South Bend exit.
Ever since former Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly was fired by the LSU Tigers during the 2025 college football season, there hasn’t been much conversation about Kelly in general. While he navigates unemployment, the Fighting Irish and head coach Marcus Freeman are setting up for what they hope is a championship run in 2026. LSU, on the other hand, hired former Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin to attempt to get the Tiger program back to prominence.
Kelly resurfaced this week when he joined Dusty Dvoracek and Danny Kanell on Sirius XM radio to talk about a variety of topics, which included his exit from Notre Dame following the 2021 season, his opinion on the current state of college football, and his coaching future. When it comes to him leaving South Bend on bad terms, Kelly opted to double down on his legacy with the Fighting Irish. The smugness confirmed everything that Notre Dame fans already knew.
Brian Kelly on his exit from Notre Dame
“It’s hard,” Kelly told Dvoracek and Kanell. “I mean, we had just finished building our dream home, my wife and I. You could walk out of our home and look at the golden dome. We tore down an apartment complex to build this beautiful home. We had no intention of leaving Notre Dame. I was the longest, and still am the longest serving head coach, all-time winningest coach. We had no idea that this was going to come upon us, or we wouldn’t have done those things.
“So they’re really difficult. I think what the ultimate decision was for us is that we got the program back to where it needed to be,” Kelly continued. “Our deal coming in was we need to get this program back to being an elite program. Everybody associates success with winning national championships, or winning Super Bowls, or World Series. I get that. I totally get that. But that wasn’t our mindset. Our mindset was to get this program back and be a consistent force in college football. In some instances, we felt like our job had been completed. We had one more challenge left, and that was to win a national championship. That’s kind of what the mindset was leading into that decision.”
Brian Kelly never changes
Kelly did a lot of good things during his time in South Bend. He did take over a Notre Dame team in a tough spot and did manage to get them back to respectability. Kelly helped to rebuild the floor, ending his 12-year tenure with a 113-40 overall record. That included seven double-digit win seasons. While Kelly could never get the team over the biggest hurdle, the program was inarguably better than the one he took over.
When you really dig into where he left the program, however, things weren’t as solid as some believed. Freeman inherited a quarterback room that was a mess, as well as defensive line and wide receiver depth charts that were also not in ideal shape. Freeman had to completely change the ideology and standard for high school recruiting. In a lot of ways, Kelly was holding the program back.
Instead of remaining humble and remembering his time in South Bend fondly, Kelly takes every chance he can to pump up his ego in his typical nearsighted fashion. To talk about him being the winningest coach in program history completely avoids the context that the title is actually a longevity award, especially with seasons getting longer in recent memory. To claim that title when your record against top 25 opponents was 23-23, record against top 10 opponents was 4-11, and record against top 5 teams is 1-17, just feels so wrong.
Kelly gained a reputation for always falling short in the big games and rarely even being competitive in them. For a program with the rich history of Notre Dame to validate your resume by padding your record against non-ranked teams is misguided. But for those who have followed Kelly over the years, this type of comment shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Winning national championships not being a part of Kelly’s mindset tells you everything you need to know. It is such a damning comment, particularly when thinking about all the great players and coaches who have donned the blue and gold over their long history. As Kelly said, he felt his job was complete. Being a solid to good program is not the standard at Notre Dame.
From that perspective, Kelly failed to hold the standard. While many can appreciate the good that Kelly accomplished while with the Notre Dame program, hearing his perspective on his time in South Bend makes it even harder to appreciate. Every time Kelly speaks, more and more misguided comments come to the surface, including these most recent remarks.
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