Did Kelly meet with Notre Dame before the Pittsburgh game?
According to the Chicago Tribune, Brian Kelly didn’t interview with Notre Dame officials yesterday because he had already interview with them last week before Cincinnati’s game against Pittsburgh.
Kelly had a meeting last week about the opening with representatives of Notre Dame before Cincinnati’s Big East championship game against Pittsburgh, the Tribune has learned.
Talks progressed well enough that the official announcement Kelly will be Charlie Weis’ replacement could come as early as Friday — any time after Cincinnati’s football banquet Thursday night.
It also was important to Kelly to delay any possible announcement until after he had a chance to talk to his Bearcats in person at Thursday’s season-ending banquet. He informed his players at a team meeting Monday before leaving for New York that he planned to speak with Notre Dame.
None of this should surprise anyone given how college coaches (Bobby Petrino, Rich Rodriguez, Nick Saban, etc.) are always looking for the next big job/payday. Kelly himself ditched Central Michigan right before its bowl game a couple years ago to coach at Cincinnati.
Was it immoral for Kelly to talk to Notre Dame days before Cincinnati’s biggest game of the season? I’ll leave that up to you to decide. Personally, I’m so numb to the way college coaches job hop that I could care less at this point. There’s no loyalty anymore and it doesn’t appear that things are going to change anytime soon.
We’ll just have to wait and see if the Tribune’s report is right that Kelly is bound for South Bend. But all signs point to him being Notre Dame’s next head coach.
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Why do I get the feeling that this guy is going to self destruct? I don’t see where he is the end all to ND’s problems. What has this guy done but leave or bail out on every program he’s been with and also, what has he won to get all this attention.
I don’t like him and think ND needs to slow the hell down.
I’ve been waiting for this. ND wasn’t going to pull the trigger on Weis until they had at least some idea they had a coach in waiting. Knock Kelly for talking to them if you want but how about ND? They’d be lawyering up if they had a guy under contract, were heading to a bowl game, and a bigger higher profile program came calling their coach for an interview. The NCAA needs to put a rule in place similar to the NFL that schools can’t talk to coaches until after the last bowl game is played. Now the kids at Cincy have a distraction they didn’t ask for and don’t deserve.