Backtracking: Brian Kelly backing Notre Dame in slippery show of support for Irish

When Brian Kelly left Notre Dame for LSU at the end of the 2021 season, he wasn't shy about telling everyone why: Kelly felt as though he'd hit a ceiling in South Bend, that LSU would allow him "to be in an environment where I have the resources to win a national championship." Sure, he was leaving recruits and players in the lurch mere weeks after becoming the school's all-time wins leader, but that was just collateral damage; he'd taken the Irish as far as they could go, and he was tired of sitting at the kids table.

Flash forward three-plus years, and Kelly's Tigers are coming off a 9-4 season and a win over Baylor in the Texas Bowl, their place in the SEC pecking order as uncertain as ever. Notre Dame, meanwhile? Their season is still going, with a showdown against Ohio State in the College Football Playoff national championship game on tap on Jan. 20. So much for the kids table.

Which would seem to be a pretty firm rebuke to both Kelly and his assessment of Notre Dame's program. But Kelly, ever the master of spin, doesn't see it that way. To hear him tell it, Irish fans should really be thanking him.

Brian Kelly's passive-aggressive support for Notre Dame is the height of hypocrisy

Asked about the upcoming national title game at an American Football Coaches Association meeting in Charlotte on Tuesday, Kelly acted as though what happened between he and Notre Dame was all just water under the bridge.

"I'm happy for all those guys, I pull for them," Kelly said, per CBS Sports. "A lot of the guys there that are on both sides of the ball, I recruited. Obviously I want to see those guys win it all, and I think they're in a great position. Totally excited for those guys."

That is true in a technical sense; veterans like Howard Cross and Jack Kiser were originally Kelly recruits who stuck around through the transition to Freeman. Of course, it's also a serious distortion of reality: While he's certainly benefitted from players he inherited from the Kelly era, Freeman has remade this roster in his image, from transfer quarterback Riley Leonard to running back Jeremiyah Love to freshman left tackle Anthony Knapp to cornerback Christian Gray. If anything, Notre Dame is more talented across the board now than it ever was under Kelly.

And more to the point, it's a galling flipflop. Players like Cross and Kiser were the same ones that Kelly threw under the bus when he decided to bolt for Baton Rouge back in 2021, claiming that they simply weren't good enough to get him where he wanted to go. To backtrack now and say that, actually, you supported them all along — after they've gutted their way closer to a national title than Kelly ever got — is the height of hypocrisy. Kelly made perfectly clear what he thought of these players and this program three years ago; the Irish and their fans shouldn't give him the time of day now.