Brian Kelly: ‘I want to beat Nick Saban’
We get it. You want to move on from Brian Kelly. He did what he felt he needed to do, so why should we even bother discussing him anymore? Well, just humor us for a moment.
You see, Brian Kelly now coaches in the SEC, which means more opportunities to play Nick Saban and Alabama. He only could do that at Notre Dame when a national championship or a spot in the national championship was on the line. That happened twice, and it never went well for the Irish. Kelly said during a podcast interview with former Irish safety Shaun Crawford that the opportunity to play Saban factored into his decision:
“I want to beat Nick Saban. Who doesn’t want to beat Nick Saban, you know what I mean? I want to play him in the regular season. I mean, that’s the standard, right? Now, he’s a conference opponent.”
Kelly also offered this on the differences between the Irish and LSU as far as national title chances:
“Well, if you look at … at Notre Dame, we were right there. What were some of those differences? You played in those games. Maybe a little more skill on the perimeter, maybe a little bit more in those areas that were hard to get to Notre Dame – maybe a D-lineman here or there, maybe a receiver here or there, a running back here or there. It was just a slight difference.
And I think that’s how close it is at Notre Dame, and so we’re not talking about big leaps here. But we’re talking about a couple of players here or there that I think at LSU, we’ve seen the Ja’Marr Chase’s, and we’ve seen the kind of players that you can get immediately here just in the state of Louisiana that are much more difficult to get year-in and year-out at Notre Dame because you’ve gotta go from coast to coast. You’ve gotta go from Los Angeles to Cleveland to find those guys.”
Take it for what it is. The man has made his case.
