Notre Dame Football: Brian Kelly remains optimistic about 2020 season

Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly remains optimistic that the upcoming 2020 college football season will take place despite growing concerns that it may be altered by the current coronavirus pandemic.

With each passing day, fans are becoming more and more concerned about the fate of the upcoming 2020 college football season. Notre Dame fans who are concerned should be interested in what head coach Brian Kelly had to say about the situation.

There have been talks of a condensed schedule, where teams would only play other teams in their conference. There have been talks of delaying the start to the season to February of 2021. There have been talks of games with no fans. There have even been talks about canceling the season altogether in a worst-case scenario.

Through it all, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly has remained relatively optimistic that the season will take place this fall. That is not to say that he has taken the current coronavirus pandemic lightly, though.

Notre Dame was among the first group of schools to dismiss their student-athletes and suspend all athletics and recruiting events. Kelly has been consistent in saying that the proper safety measures must be put in place before any student can return to campus.

Kelly joined the Rich Eisen Show earlier this week to share his thoughts on the current situation and the outlook of the 2020 college football season.

The clip in the tweet above starts with Eisen asking Kelly, “Where do things stand right now in regards to you playing the season?”

Kelly began his response with a somewhat definitive, “I think we are going to play.” He then expanded on his stance by saying, “Things are trending that way. We are moving in that direction. We want to play in the Fall.”

With that said, Kelly did include the caveat of, “At the end of the day, that decision is going to be made by our president (Fr. John Jenkins) and our board of trustees. Not the football coach.” In other words, the University must first deem it safe for students to return to campus before the discussion of the football season can be had.

Kelly also talked about increased communication with his players and their families. He said his players are eager to get back to campus to resume football activities. At the same time, Kelly and his staff want to be able to ensure the safety of those players so that their families can feel comfortable letting them travel back to South Bend.

A little longer than a month ago, Brian Kelly was asked on Scott Van Pelt’s show how much time he would need to prepare his team for the 2020 season. Kelly said that his staff would want to be able to resume team activities by July 1st in order to sufficiently prepare their players for the season.

Starting any later than July 1st, according to Kelly, would result in a diminished on-field product and increased player-safety concerns. We are now just over a month away from that date. Brian Kelly says that things are trending in the right direction. Let’s hope they trend fast enough.