SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The veranda adjacent to Brian Kelly’s office in the Guglielmino Athletic Complex looks like it belongs at a private Westchester County golf club. From that veranda, complete with outdoor furniture and sun umbrellas, Kelly has a clear view of the Labar Practice Complex, the lush football fields where Notre Dame prepares for each week’s opponent.
Kelly has seen some disturbing and — on the fateful day of Oct. 27, 2010 — horrifying things.
When he replaced Charlie Weis prior to the 2010 season, Kelly inherited a team laden with entitled football players who had been told they were NFL-bound. Weis, the former New England Patriots offensive coordinator, used his pro football background as his calling card. He brought in some talented players, but he didn’t develop a team with purpose.
Kelly had to impress on those players they were there to serve Our Lady, serve the university, and yes, he would help them get to the NFL. He was galled, not so much by their physical shape but by their pedestrian pace. His offenses at Grand Valley State, Central Michigan and Cincinnati ran at warp speed. The team he took over operated at wart speed.
The Irish went 8-5 in his first season. A team slightly more in his image went 8-5 in 2011, a season during which Kelly was suffering from brutal physical and emotional pain.
A bulging disk in his back required surgery this summer. The emotional pain gets tweaked every day when Kelly walks from the “Gug” to the practice field and sees the large white rock bearing the plaque and a memorial candle for Declan Sullivan, the team video assistant who died when the tower from where he was filming practice collapsed in gusty wind.
It was Kelly’s call not to lower the hydraulic lift that fateful day. Kelly has three children, whom he visited at camp this week. He has a wife, Pacqui, who has beaten breast cancer so many times the disease is thinking of entering witness protection. Kelly is steeped in the ethos of family. He also is a volatile competitor, harboring an inner Woody Hayes.
Year 3 of the Kelly era begins in little more than a month, when the Irish open in Ireland against Navy. Some are saying Kelly must get the Irish to a major bowl game or there could be heat. What folly!
Kelly has never ducked the pressure and expectations that come with being the Notre Dame coach. When hired, he dismissed the concept of a three- or a five-year plan. This is Notre Dame, home to 13 national championships — but none since 1988. This is 2012, when customers get irritable if their soy latte macchiato takes more than five minutes to appear.
Kelly has stoked the expectations on the Irish by saying three months ago, “I feel really good because for the first time I can say, ‘This is my team.’ ”
Which Notre Dame fans translate into, “We’re winning the 14th national title.”
Easy, Domers. The schedule is daunting, Along with the usual suspects — Michigan, Michigan State and USC — the Irish have Miami and Oklahoma. The quarterback situation is in limbo, though the Irish landed Indiana prep star Gunner Kiel, who could rekindle the Fighting Irish legacy at that position.
This team is the fastest, deepest and toughest Notre Dame will put on the field since Lou Holtz’s 1995 team, which finished 9-3, losing to Florida State in the Orange Bowl. Since then, the list of Irish head coaches would make an interesting “Jeopardy!” category:
Bob Davie: nice man, GQ looks, no prior head coaching experience, now the coach at New Mexico. Tyrone Willingham: smart man, vanilla personality, no major bowl win, now retired. And Weis: brilliant offensive strategist, cantankerous personality, had not been a college coach since the late 1980s, now the head coach at basketball-crazy Kansas.
Kelly is the first hire since Holtz that makes sense. He has won at every level of college coaching, is smart and passionate and has made the Irish a player in recruiting. Domers shouldn’t be screaming for a title this year, rather a stage-setter. The 2013 schedule is challenging but not pulverizing. The quarterback situation should be solidified by then, the team talented and experienced.
Kelly will not tolerate such thoughts, but they are reality. In the last three years under Weis, Domers began calling the Guglielmino Athletic Complex the Bastille.
“You know, storm the Bastille, kill the king,’’ said one alum.
If Notre Dame shows faith, patience and support in the first coach that makes sense in decades, national championship No. 14 will come. Then they can call the veranda Kelly’s Korner.