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Brian Kelly sends strong message, advice to Marcus Freeman

ns_headshot_2024-clearby: Nick Schultz04/08/22NickSchultz_7
marcus-freeman-shares-final-conversation-brian-kelly-lsu-tigers
Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

After Brian Kelly left Notre Dame for LSU, the Fighting Irish hired Marcus Freeman to replace him. Freeman served as Kelly’s defensive coordinator last season, and the new Tigers coach shared some advice for the first-year head coach in an interview with CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd.

Notre Dame took a different approach to this hire, though. Kelly arrived in South Bend with nearly 30 years of coaching experience, including 19 as a head coach. Freeman got into coaching in 2010 and is gearing up for his first head coaching opportunity.

Given his experiences at Grand Valley State, Central Michigan and Cincinnati before arriving at Notre Dame, Kelly passed along some advice as Freeman gets ready to take the reins.

“I needed 19 years of head coaching to f— up the first couple of years at Notre Dame,” Kelly joked about his 16-10 start in his first two years with the Irish. “Marcus will be [in] some rough spots. He’s smart. He’ll lean on the people around him.”

Freeman, 36, has high-level assistant experience as the co-defensive coordinator at Purdue in 2016 and as Cincinnati’s defensive coordinator from 2017-20. Last year was his lone year as Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator, and now he’s running the show for the first time.

Brian Kelly sounds off on lack of support at Notre Dame, impact on LSU decision

When Brian Kelly left Notre Dame for LSU, questions rose as to why he’d leave after becoming the winningest coach in Fighting Irish history. He shed some light on that this week in a couple interviews, including one with CBS Sports.

Kelly spoke with Dennis Dodd and opened up about the facilities and support at Notre Dame and the impact that had on his decision to take his new job. He first brought up the Guglielmino Athletics Complex — also known as “The Gug” — which is where the locker rooms and training rooms are. He pointed out the lack of food options and training table in the building.

“Did you walk into the Gug?” Kelly asked Dodd. “There is no training table. We bring food in from the cafeteria. You get a sack lunch, a box lunch.”

Kelly also said he asked for improvements to the building six years ago. Those changes didn’t happen, and Kelly noticed.

“That building had been built not to service those areas,” Kelly said. “That wasn’t the vision the university had. I don’t have a problem with that. They had built that building to meet and locker and that’s it. We had outgrown that. I had asked for that to be addressed in 2016, and we were at 2022.”