FORT LAUDERDALE — There really isn’t another job like it anywhere in American sports. Think about it: Knute Rockne wasn’t just a person, wasn’t just a coach (and just maybe the best one ever, if you’re impressed by things like three national titles and a 105-12-5 record) he was a character — as in, a movie character, as in Pat O’Brien, as in “Win one for the Gipper.”
Brian Kelly has Knute Rockne’s old job.
Ara Parseghian and Dan Devine weren’t just people, weren’t just coaches — and successful ones at that, three national championships between them, but they were characters — as in, movie characters, though Parseghian probably liked his portrayal in “Rudy” substantially more than Devine did.
Brian Kelly has Parseghian’s old job. He has Devine’s old job. He has Frank Leahy’s old job, too, and Lou Holtz’s, and if they haven’t quite made it to the silver screen yet, there’s always time.
It is Notre Dame, after all. It is the job of head football coach. Say what you will about the pinstripes, do you remember who played Miller Huggins in “Pride of the Yankees?” Say what you will about the Celtics, where is the iconic portrayal of Red Auerbach? And what’s Danny DeVito waiting for, anyway?
Kelly was talking about his players yesterday, about how they might respond to running onto the field at Sun Life Stadium knowing the nation is watching, knowing they’re trying to unseat the mighty Alabama Crimson Tide as national champions, and this is what he had to say about that task:
“They enjoy the attention. That’s why they go to Notre Dame. They know that they’re going to get a chance to play on national television and in front of large crowds.”
Of course, he might easily have been talking about himself, about the challenge he undertook three years ago, taking over the most fabled sporting program in America. Kelly was no wide-eyed neophyte, after all. He knew what he was getting into. He knew what Notre Dame was, and is, and always will be. He has been a head coach for 22 years, and if the Fighting Irish win tonight, it will be his 200th victory.
It wasn’t the turnip truck that dropped him off in South Bend, Ind. It was the ceaseless grind of a coaching life.
“All of my stops along my career have been formative for me to be where I am today,” he said a few days ago. “Assumption College, a Division II program with no scholarships, I remember having to take my car, turn the lights on so we could paint the field Friday night before the Saturday game. The coaches did that.
“All of those experiences help formulate who you are today. I know how to appreciate the work that our support staff puts in every single day, and I think all those things help you when you get to Notre Dame.”
But what helps you succeed at Notre Dame? It’s hard to find a common thread among the men who failed at the job — the Charlie Weises, the Gerry Fausts, even Joe Kuharich back in the day.
But there does seem to be a common thread to the successes, the Rockne-Layden-Leahy-Parseghian-Devine-Holtz foundation: They were successes on their own watch, so they were never swallowed whole by what Notre Dame presents. For Rockne, it was creating the very myth of Notre Dame. For the others, it was about winning, big, at places like Northwestern and Boston College and Missouri and Arkansas and transferring that success to the sport’s biggest stage.
That was the smartest of all blueprints the school could’ve followed when it selected Kelly, who won two Division II titles at Grand Valley State, who won plenty at Central Michigan and Cincinnati, too, neither of which has ever been thought of as cradles of coaches.
“We do a lot of the same things here that we did there,” Kelly said. “[Tonight], I know I’ll approach things much the same way we did before the national championship games at Grand Valley. The game is the same. It’s just the setting that’s different.”
No Hollywood script for tonight, not yet anyway. But this is Notre Dame, after all. This is the job of head football coach. And you never know what the future holds.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com