All week I have heard about how Brian Kelly turned his back on Cincinnati when he accepted the position at Notre Dame. The man who was just a couple of weeks ago was loved by the Bearcats and their fans is now about as welcome in Cincinnati as Rich Rodriguez is in West Virginia.
Of course, since it involves Notre Dame there are plenty of people commenting on how wrong this is. Of course, they probably would not ordinarily care about Cincinnati if it didn’t involve Notre Dame.
What kills me about this whole thing is that lack of appreciation that seems to be coming from Cincinnati. Before you call him a liar, traitor, whatever else, why don’t we all take a step back and really look at this?
Did Brian Kelly really do anything wrong? Don’t people do really good in one job and get offers from other companies? Don’t they have the right to say yes or no? If they take another job, are they considered traitors considering all the good things they did for a company.
Looking at the state of Cincinnati now compared to before Kelly got there, is there really a comparison. I remember them getting beat out here by Hawaii before Kelly got there. Then when Kelly took over, he turned them into winners.
The Bearcats are now the best team in the Big East. They have now gone to back to back BCS bowls. When was that ever heard of before Kelly got there? Next year, they will still be a good team no matter who the coach is because of Kelly’s recruits.
Instead of reaching for hate, why not show gratitude?
I know it is easy for me to say that since I am a lifelong Notre Dame fan. While it is true that I am an Irish fan, I do understand how Bearcat fans feel. I have been there. I am a Central Michigan Alum.
When Kelly was there, he took that program to new heights. He found Dan Lefevour when no other college was looking at him. Lefevour is still getting it done for the Chippewas three years later.
When Kelly left for Cincinnati, I am not going to lie. I was disappointed. The reason I was disappointed was because CMU had never had a coach like that and I didn’t want to see him leave.
At the same time, I wasn’t blaming Kelly. He had a better opportunity. I would never criticize somebody for doing exactly the same thing I would do in that situation. That is why all this hate for him is uncalled for. Many of the haters are hypocrites because they would do the same thing if they had an opportunity at a “Dream Job.”
Sure there is the issue of honesty. Do we really know he lied when he said, “I am not going anywhere?” Maybe at the time he said that, he wasn’t going anywhere because Notre Dame hadn’t offered him a job yet.
If he did know, was he just supposed to tell his team he was leaving before they played Pittsburgh?
Unfortunately, there really isn’t a good way to leave. At the same time, don’t hate a guy for doing the same thing you would do. Instead, show appreciation for all he did for your school.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
If you consider yourself a journalist, I would like to think you’d be smarter than to type some naive tripe like “Do we really know he lied when he said, ‘I am not going anywhere?’”
He did lie. He did go somewhere. I speak for myself and nobody else – but your whole premise is a straw man, and an absurd one above and beyond even that. Nobody’s criticizing him for taking an upgrade in either pay or prestige (even if the prestige of ND is wholly manufactured at this point, as the “Irish legacy” people speak of is an old wive’s tale). We criticize *how* he went about it. The look on the Bearcats’ players’ faces; the things they said and didn’t say to the media; the way he showed up to the Senior Banquet flanked by police escort and left virtually immediately. I see how his team regards him, how they feel betrayed and lied to. You can make all the excuses in the world, but you don’t need to. You have him now. Nothing changes that. But it’s revisionist history to try to argue that he left the University of Cincinnati as a school, Cincinnati as a city, and his team as a coach on anything but lousy terms. And that’s, again, not because of what his decision was, but purely because he couldn’t have handled it any more poorly than he did.
You’ll see what I mean when he leaves the Irish to go coach in the NFL in a few years.