Today was a good day for Notre Dame Coach Brian Kelly to “win the press conference.” Pressers are like games, there are winners and losers. Your performance is judged. Although not with numbers and statistics, some people perform better than others. This offseason was an extremely tumultuous one for Brian Kelly and Notre Dame.
You had: the TMZification of the news around Manti Te’o, who became a figure as polarizing and visible as Tim Tebow, Kelly flirting with taking the Philadelphia Eagles job and the way he handled that was controversial, rebounding from all the bad publicity that comes from taking a pounding in the national title game, and the starting QB being kicked out of school; this news being released at midnight on a Saturday of a Holiday weekend.
Online casinos still have that team from South Bend as one of the more likely teams to play for the national title this season. Sports gaming establishments believe Bama is the favorite, with UND as a strong candidate for the BCS. Sports books see them as having a decent chance to be back in the national title game, but not many casinos figured they would make the run they did last year. And obviously the online betting odds were against the Fighting Irish in the BCS Title game, and they fell well short of covering the spread. And the football season is a lot closer than you think.
Today was the press conference opening the season. Practice begins this weekend. Media Day is 20 days away and the opener versus Temple is on August 29th. And according to the transcript today, the phrase “a day-to-day basis” was used 8 times by BK during this press conference today. From the Brian Kelly opening statement:
Brian Kelly explaining his decision to name Tommy Rees the starter in the wake of Everett Golson’s dismissal:
I didn’t name him the starter for all 13 games. I named him the starter for Temple. My expectation is he will take the job and continue to lead our football team. He was the most experienced. He’s won. He obviously knows our offense very well.
Brian Kelly explaining how Tommy Rees could get better:
We talked ad nauseam about turnovers, taking care of the football. I think he’s got to continue to make good decisions, as any quarterback needs to do that. I don’t think we’re just taking this about Tommy Rees. I think any quarterback has got to do a great job of taking care of the football. We did that last year. My expectation is we would continue to do that.
Q. Coming off of last season, the loss to Alabama, you interviewing with the Eagles, what happened to Manti, then Everett, is there anything you have to do now or ongoing to get people past all that negativity that happened in that period?
Brian Kelly: It was in the rearview mirror the next day. I mean, we don’t even think about it, don’t even talk about it. It’s history. As I mentioned, our guys were focused the very next day on winter workouts, early?morning conditioning, building into our spring and into our summer. It’s not even something that’s discussed.
Q. Is there any confidence building needed to do after the loss to Alabama to convince this team you can get back there and put up a better challenge?
Brian Kelly: Yeah. Everything we’ve worked on since that next day, and I mean the next day, is about getting back to the national championship game and winning it. There’s not a man that sat in this seat, when we met as an entire team, that is not committed to that end. That’s why they’re here. That’s why there’s such great excitement and anticipation. From our standpoint as coaches, we can feel that.
So it’s pretty clear that our players are committed to one goal, and that is to get back to a national championship, just as every other BCS school on Media Day is expecting the same thing.
Paul M. Banks is the owner of The Sports Bank.net, a Fox Sports affiliate. He is also an analyst for 95.7 The Fan, and writes on Chicago sports media for Chicago Now. President Obama follows his Twitter account (@paulmbanks)