Brian Kelly Announces He's '100 Percent' Supporting Notre Dame Football
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Having left LSU on some fairly bad terms last year, longtime college football head coach Brian Kelly has apparently regained a fondness for another team he left in a slightly better place: Notre Dame.
Kelly is set to join CBS in a media role this coming college football season and he's decided that he's going to fully back Notre Dame and head coach Marcus Freeman. Appearing on The Independent: A Notre Dame Football Podcast, Kelly said that he is "100 percent supporting what they're doing" and hopes to even be visible for a day at some point.
“I want to support the program. I want that out there,” Kelly said. “And I want to be visible for a day. I’m not in there to look at what they’re running offensively or defensively. I just want to show that I have 100 percent faith and confidence in what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. I want our fans to know, the Notre Dame fans, that I’m 100 percent supporting what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.”
Brian Kelly on Marcus Freeman
Kelly had glowing praise for Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman, who served as his defensive coordinator in 2021 before Kelly departed for the LSU job. He called freeman "extraordinary" for leading Notre Dame as high as he has with no prior head coaching experience before getting the job.
“Well, first of all, I will say this: it’s extraordinary that a football coach with no head coaching experience has been able to step in the job and do as well as Marcus has,” Kelly said. “I think that that needs to be said. I had 19 years of being a head coach, and I felt like the water was up to my nose at times at Notre Dame. So I have such respect for Marcus and what he’s been able to do in that role. Now, as you said, there’s learning curves along the way.
“What Marcus does extremely well is he listens. He doesn’t have a preordained ‘this is the way we’re doing it.’ He’ll get there, but he listens, and he listens to people around him, people that he respects. And because he does that, and he’s humble, he’s able to move with the job, as the job becomes difficult at times or ever changing, and that’s a great quality he had. And I saw that (when he was) a defensive coordinator, he didn’t come in and go, ‘Hey, we’re running the 4-2-5, that’s all I can do. I don’t know anything else.’ He was amenable to what are the things that we need to do to win.”
Kelly served as head coach at Notre Dame from 2010 to 2021, going 92-39 during his time there and leading them to a national title game in 2012.
Freeman picked up right where Kelly left off, going 43-12 in four years and leading the team to the national title game in 2024.
This story was originally published by The Spun on Jul 14, 2026, where it first appeared in the College Football section. Add The Spun as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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