When Brian Kelly left Notre Dame for LSU after the 2021 season, the coach mentioned he felt he and the Preventing Irish have been on totally different paths.
Virtually three seasons later, these divergent paths have Notre Dame on the doorstep of the School Soccer Playoff and Kelly and LSU spiraling.
The distinction between Kelly’s former program and his present scenario was by no means extra stark than in Week 12. Notre Dame improved to 9-1 with its eighth straight victory, crushing Virginia in a 35-14 rout extra lopsided than the ultimate rating suggests.
Quarterback Riley Leonard threw two of his three landing passes to Jayden Harrison and Mitchell Evans, becoming completely with the Senior Day celebration in the course of the Irish’s regular-season dwelling finale.
The win additional nudges a Preventing Irish workforce already set to qualify for the Playoff, mirrored in its No. 8 rating within the November 12 committee ballot.
Across the identical time Notre Dame was placing the ending touches on its eighth consecutive win, LSU was heading towards its third straight defeat. And it wasn’t simply that the Tigers fell to middling Florida, 27-16, a defeat that charges because the worst of Kelly’s tenure at LSU.
His sideline shouting matches with receivers Chris Hilton Jr. and Kyren Lacy looked like a season quickly spiraling uncontrolled.
“Our incapability to attain touchdowns and factors continues to crop up,” Kelly mentioned following the sport, LSU’s second straight through which it failed to succeed in 20 factors. “As coaches, we have now to take duty. Gamers should personal their finish of it.”
“Our workforce’s obtained to decide on how they transfer ahead,” he added.
Kelly’s demeanor on Saturday exuded much more frustration than dejection; dejection appears a extra apt description of his postgame deal with following the 2021 Rose Bowl Recreation.
In Notre Dame’s second School Soccer Playoff look of Kelly’s tenure—and the Preventing Irish’s third real pursuit of a nationwide championship within the 11 years Kelly helmed the Golden Domers—the workforce bumped into an Alabama buzzsaw.
The 31-14 loss was essentially the most aggressive of Notre Dame’s three nationwide title flirtations in the course of the Kelly years, coming after a 30-3 rout in opposition to Clemson within the 2018 Cotton Bowl and the infamous 42-14 BCS Championship Recreation beatdown in 2013.
A 3rd dream season ending with a thud seemingly left Kelly at a loss. He spent one other season in South Bend, however the finish appeared inevitable after that Rose Bowl.
In spring 2022, when Kelly lamented that Notre Dame and he “didn’t appear to be on the identical web page,” he detailed his determination to take over at LSU as the mandatory step to win a nationwide championship.
“I wish to be in an surroundings the place I’ve the assets to win a nationwide championship,” Kelly mentioned on the time. “And I got here down right here as a result of I wish to be within the American League East.”
Properly, with the New York Yankees shedding the newest World Collection to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the AL East has not claimed baseball’s prime prize since 2018.
The school soccer panorama shouldn’t be fairly as drastically totally different because it was when the SEC monopolized seven straight nationwide championships from 2006 by way of 2012—the final of these consecutive titles coming at Kelly’s expense.
Nevertheless, with Michigan claiming the newest championship, Oregon ranked No. 1 in 2024, and the same old SEC juggernauts, Alabama and Georgia, exhibiting uncommon vulnerability with two losses every, the highway to the highest might not should traverse the Southeast.
LSU now sits at 6-4. After falling to No. 22 in the newest Playoff rankings, logic dictates the Tigers might be out of the ballot altogether come Tuesday. Notre Dame, in the meantime, ought to climb, particularly with No. 7 Tennessee shedding at Georgia.
When Kelly lamented that he and Notre Dame weren’t on the identical path, he might have been appropriate—simply not in the way in which he supposed.
