Lou Holtz: Brian Kelly didn’t answer one letter while head coach of Notre Dame football
Lou Holtz and Brian Kelly had different tactics while they were head coaches at Notre Dame. Holtz was all in on everything that goes with the Fighting Irish brand. Kelly liked to do things on his own terms.
Both were wildly successful.
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Holtz won the program’s last national championship in 1988. Kelly came close in 2012 and punched tickets to the College Football Playoff in 2018 and 2020. He went 11-1 last season before departing to become the head coach at LSU.
Amidst all of his success, Holtz loved interaction with outsiders. Kelly, not so much. To the point that he might have even viewed Holtz, who is synonymous with Notre Dame, as one. Take what Holtz said to a gathering of folks at the “Wins Without Losses” dinner at Vestavia Hills Country Club in Birmingham, Ala., earlier this week.
“I wrote Brian Kelly maybe eight positive letters during his time at Notre Dame,” Holtz said. “And I go to the mailbox every day hoping I’m going to find an answer. He never responded to one of them.”
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Holtz didn’t hold it against Kelly, even though he responded to everything — good or bad.
“That’s his choice,” he said. “I answered every letter that came in to Notre Dame. When you get a nasty letter you say, ‘Dear Jim, just thought you should know some idiot is writing this letter and signing your name and hurting your reputation.’ I’d find out who it is and put a stop to it. But Brian Kelly didn’t believe in that.”
Obviously, Holtz took matters into his own hands as a head coach. Kelly played a bit more by the rules and used the media as a sounding board for somewhat off-topic issues he wanted to address. To each his own. Whatever works. Holtz, Kelly and Knute Rockne are the only three coaches in Notre Dame history to have won at least 100 games while at the helm of the Irish program.
“I’m sure he’ll be very successful at LSU,” Holtz told his Southern audience of Kelly. “He has been everywhere. But he’s going to find out he’s not going to be playing Toledo. He’s not going to be playing Marshall. This conference is a little bit different.”
