Brian Kelly recalls tearing down an apartment complex for dream home at Notre Dame originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
In the hit song APT., ROSÉ and Bruno Mars sing, “It’s whatever, it’s whatever, it’s whatever you like,” while turning an apartment into a party. For Brian Kelly, the apartment story hits a little differently. He tore one down.
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Kelly revealed during an appearance on SiriusXM College Sports Radio that he and his wife had just finished building what he described as their dream home near the campus of Notre Dame Fighting Irish football. It was a house so close they could see the Golden Dome from their yard.
“It’s hard. My wife and I had just finished building our dream home,” Kelly said. “You could walk out of the house and look at the Golden Dome. We tore down an apartment complex to build this beautiful home. We had no intentions of leaving Notre Dame.”
At the time, Kelly had already cemented himself as the most successful coach in modern Notre Dame history, becoming the program’s all-time winningest coach while leading the Irish to multiple College Football Playoff appearances.
His departure in late November 2021 was still one of the more surprising coaching moves in recent college football history. Notre Dame was 11-1 at the time and still had a path to the four-team College Football Playoff depending on results during championship weekend.
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However, Kelly left to become the head coach at LSU Tigers football.
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To this day, Kelly feels his original mission in South Bend had largely been accomplished.
“Our deal coming in was we need to get this program back to being an elite program,” Kelly said. “Everybody associates success with winning national championships or winning Super Bowls or World Series. I get that. I totally get that. But that wasn’t our mindset. Our mindset was to get this program back and be a consistent force in college football.”
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“In some instances, we felt like our job had been completed,” Kelly said. “And we had one more challenge left and that was to win a national championship.”
