What Brian Kelly said about Notre Dame’s ‘priorities’
On Sunday morning, before LSU opened its season with a 45-24 loss to Florida State, ESPN writers Chris Low and M.A. Voepel published a story about the remaking of LSU athletics, for which they interviewed former Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly.
Kelly, who left the Fighting Irish for the head coaching job at LSU in December 2021, made some interesting comments about his time at Notre Dame.
“I loved my time at Notre Dame. I have nothing but great memories there,” Kelly told Low and Voepel. “But the whole landscape there is different than it is here. It just is.”
The 12-year Notre Dame coach continued, implying that academics are often prioritized in South Bend, whereas his new job in Baton Rouge puts a premium on athletics.
“There are priorities at Notre Dame,” Kelly said. “The architectural building needed to get built first. They ain’t building the architectural building here first. We’re building the athletic training facility first, [and] we’re in the midst of a $22 million addition to our athletic training facility. It’s something I said we needed, and we went and immediately raised the money.”
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Kelly also reiterated that coaching in the Southeastern Conference was one of the benefits that drew him away from Notre Dame. He was reminded of the strength of the league when Alabama beat the Irish 31-14 in the National Semifinal in 2020, but he said that game was not the reason he left Notre Dame.
He did imply to Low and Voepel, however, that it changed the way he viewed Notre Dame’s resources.
“That second time, we played an outstanding Alabama team as well as anybody played them that year,” Kelly said. “My take after the game was, ‘Yeah, we lost again, but let’s keep it in perspective. That team killed everybody.’
“But it had zero bearing on me leaving Notre Dame. What it did is it motivated me to want more for our student-athletes, to say, ‘This is what we need, and if we get these things, we can do this.’ That’s where it motivated me, and from a timing standpoint, we couldn’t deliver at the same time. Then this LSU opportunity opened up that had the things I was looking for, and I didn’t have to wait for them.”
In the first game of Kelly’s second season in Baton Rouge on Sunday night, Florida State soundly defeated LSU. The Seminoles outscored the Tigers 31-7 in the second half.
