It’s not hard to understand why Brian Kelly wants to come back to South Bend. He’s not someone who has a ton of allies in the sport. Maybe he’s hoping he’ll find an ally at Notre Dame since he did have so much success there before he left for LSU. Of course, now that the Tigers have fired Kelly, he wants someone to back him up and get his back. Unfortunately for the ex-head coach, he burned plenty of bridges after he left the Fighting Irish. Turns out burning bridges is something he’s very good at.
Brian Kelly may need Notre Dame football more after LSU torched his reputation
If Kelly didn’t burn the bridge down leading to the Bayou Bengals, then LSU’s new athletic director absolutely torched it in an interview with USA Today’s Matt Hayes. Verge Ausberry (who happens to be the father of Notre Dame linebacker Jaden Ausberry) talked about where he wants to get the Tigers back to under Lane Kiffin. In doing so, he pulled no punches about how unhappy he was in the Brian Kelly era.
“It’s going back to the Saban model,” Ausberry said. “(That means) running the whole program. Then, you have to go do some things with alumni and do things with boosters and do things with fundraising, with NIL. You have to be a part of that.”
“That’s what Lane will do,” Ausberry continued. “He’ll go out there and have that conversation with the donors and the people who support the program and (say), ‘We need your help,’ and give them his cell number.” All of this didn’t mention Kelly, but it was clear he was taking aim at the former Notre Dame head coach.
“He’s not one who’ll say, ‘OK, I don’t want people to contact me. I don’t want people to touch me. I don’t want people to be around me.’ That’s who we had. That’s why we got what we got. There was no feel, there was no connection between the LSU football program, the coach, and the fans.”
Marcus Freeman has Notre Dame football thriving where Brian Kelly fell short
That lack of connection was something quite evident to people outside the program. It was a point of ridicule among Notre Dame fans who watched Kelly put on a fake accent in his first meeting with them. They watched him shoot cringeworthy videos where he sort of danced with recruits.
Meanwhile, Fighting Irish fans watched Marcus Freeman turn around the recruiting in a way that Kelly never could. ND has five top-100 players in the current recruiting class for the third straight season. Kelly was lucky to achieve that once, let alone in consecutive seasons. He never pulled off the triple.
Brian Kelly said he wants to return to South Bend and Notre Dame to learn from the coaches there. He wants to see the coaches he worked with and pick up pointers on what to say and how to do it. And for some reason, for the former LSU coach, it feels like an especially doomed mission. Fighting Irish fans might almost feel sorry for him if Ausberry wasn’t right about his assessment. It’s probably just time for the old coach to hang up the whistle.
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