SOUTH BEND, Ind. — When Notre Dame hired Brian Kelly away from Cincinnati, he was a program builder and an offensive savant, a seemingly sure thing in an industry where those are rare. Now, one win from surpassing the omnipresent Knute Rockne as Notre Dame’s all-time wins leader, Kelly is more like a CEO. In between, Kelly has played the roles of tyrant, listener, leader and progressive. He’s been a politician, a crisis manager and a visionary. There have been moments of magic and madness, reinvention and revolt.
After 145 games in charge of the Irish, it should be easy to explain why Kelly wins.
But ask the question to people who should know, and the answers say more about what Kelly is not, at least at surface level. He’s not an ultra-modern offensive innovator like Lincoln Riley. He’s not a militant taskmaster like Nick Saban. He’s not a laser-focused recruiter like Urban Meyer. He’s not paranoid like Jim Harbaugh, folksy like Dabo Swinney or a walking embodiment of his campus’ culture like Ed Orgeron.
Also among the things Kelly is not lies the matter of a national championship. Notre Dame has not won one in 33 years, the longest drought between titles in school history. Kelly has tried to climb that mountain long enough that he’s also Notre Dame’s all-time leader in losses. But the fact he continues to attempt this summit in a sport short on patience might be where the accomplishment really begins.
To understand Notre Dame’s 12th-year head coach ahead of his first opportunity to pass Rockne this weekend against Wisconsin, The Athletic spoke with 10 current and former Irish assistants on the record to explain how Kelly has worked, led, inspired, dragged and fought his way toward a wins record that felt abstract when he was hired, unimaginable during his first few seasons and inevitable in more recent times.
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