Sports
It's CFP national championship week for Notre Dame football
Let's get this out of the way before all the hype and hoopla surrounds it Notre Dame Football in the College Football Playoff championship will be released over the next eight days.
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Notre Dame has never played this late in January. Notre Dame (14-1) has never played so many games in one season. Notre Dame has never won so much. Reasons for this run in all directions. A dynamic head coach. A solid staff. A selection that has now refused to back down for more than 128 days.
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They all helped bring Notre Dame to the brink of winning something it hasn't won since 1988. Many can be recognized for making this season go somewhere out of nowhere, including one whose name still moves the meter at Notre Dame in an angry/aggravated way.
Brian Kelly.
Before you spit out your favorite morning, afternoon, or evening drink at the thought of a slap on the back from BK, before you fire off an email of disagreement with a few #$% words in it, keep reading. Don't stop. Not yet. Listen to this column.
Thank you, Brian Kelly, for finding it best to move to the Southeastern Conference in pursuit of your elusive Division I national championship.
Thank you, Brian Kelly, for helping the Notre Dame administration understand that football had to be as serious as a surgeon.
Thank you, Brian Kelly, for giving Notre Dame football a chance to reset. And restart.
And thank you, Brian Kelly, for taking a chance in 2021 on a rising 35-year-old defensive coordinator who many wanted fired (or at least demoted) during halftime of his first crazy Labor Day game Monday night at Florida State in 2021 .
Little did we know that less than four months later, Marcus Freeman would burst through a side door of the Notre Dame Stadium locker room as Kelly's replacement. Life, man. It moves. Quick.
So thank you, Brian Kelly, for helping make much of this national championship possible.
Kelly isn't the main reason, or even a secondary reason, that everything that happened this season happened for Notre Dame, but he is in the conversation. He must be. He laid a lot of groundwork; he just didn't have the vision or patience to see it all through.
When there was more to do, he thought he had done enough.
Kelly believes his decision Monday night in late November, when he jumped ship with a 10-year contract offer from LSU, was the right one. For him. For his family. It was also the right choice for Notre Dame. Kelly has done a lot in his 12 seasons at South Bend. Asterisk aside, he won more games (113) than anyone to ever grace the Irish sidelines. More than Parseghian. More than Rockne. More than Holtz. All three have statutes outside the stadium. Then Devine too.
If there comes a day for a fifth, it won't be Kelly's. He never won the one game he was supposed to win at Notre Dame. By the end he was convinced he couldn't win it. You wonder how much of an impact that had on him at the end of his tenure, when his teams won 10, 12, 11, 10 and 11 games in his last five years. Did he at any point think: oh, what's the point?
Kelly's decision to leave Notre Dame because he didn't believe he could win national championships wasn't so much a wake-up call for the school as it was an affirmation. Wheels had already been set in motion to bring the school up to speed with the rest of the sporting elite. More administrators. More resources. It's more of a commitment to stand with the Alabamas, the Georgias and the Ohio States of the college football world. Not for a season here or there. Every season.
We see that dedication today in the amount of money, the amount of people power, the amount of effort and energy that keeps the Notre Dame football machine running. Stand at the intersection of Moose Krause Circle and Courtney Lane. There is the huge Irish Athletics Centre. There is the skeleton of what will become Shields Hall. There is progress.
Freeman has often referred to how everyone on the athletic side of campus is on the same page as everyone on the academic side of campus. From top to bottom, everyone is pulling in the same direction. Under Kelly, and under many head coaches before him, it was more of a pull-push partnership. Notre Dame was Notre Dame for a long time. No one would change that, not even an Irish Catholic from Boston.
Then Notre Dame changed. When he left, football got serious.
Kelly hasn't exactly been out of sight and out of mind for Notre Dame fans. It was hard to gauge what meant more to them in Notre Dame's week one win over Texas A&M or LSU's stumble against USC. That Kelly has not been anywhere near the elite, while the Irish have, is the gift that continues to be given to Irish fans.
That includes the core of this team: Pat Coogan, Howard Cross III, Mitchell Evans, Rylie Mills and Xavier Watts, all recruited by Kelly.
So thank you, Brian Kelly, for going out of the way and making everything possible. And everything. The Kelly piece of the 2024 puzzle is legit. No key piece. No finishing piece. But still an important piece.
Thank you for leaving. Thank you for hiring Freeman. Thank you for feeling like this program has done enough and for making room for a head coach who believes this program can, should and will do more.
Welcome to championship week, a week like no other for Notre Dame. Enjoy it. We don't know when it might happen again. Kelly was certain this wouldn't be the case. Freeman is confident this will happen.
Actually everything is possible.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at [email protected]
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Sources 2/ https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/sports/college/football/2025/01/12/believe-it-its-cfp-national-championship-week-for-notre-dame-football/77591255007/ The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article |
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