Dear Coach Kelly

     This will be my first post on this blog. I have no idea if it will be the first of one, or of one hundred. However, in order to set it in context, just a few days ago, Notre Dame lost to Michigan, dropping the Irish to 0-2 in Coach Brian Kelly's second season at the helm.

     Now, I am not egotistical or self-important enough to believe that Coach Kelly will or should look at this or anything I write; this post simply uses the rhetorical device of a letter to the coach to allow me to express myself.

     Coach Kelly was hired about a year and a half ago to take over for a program that has been mired in mediocrity since the departure of beloved head coach Lou Holtz after the 1996 season. Kelly's track record is one of winning first and foremost; however, when he was hired, there was concern that his winning had not taken place at a high enough level to prepare him for the top job at ND. Now that the team has stumbled out of the gate in the face of expectations that were really quite high, those questions, and many others, are being raised once again regarding Coach Kelly. That will inevitably lead to criticisms, and some of those will be phrased harshly. It is important for both the writer and the reader of such criticisms to keep in mind the motivation behind them. That is what this letter is about.

Dear Coach Kelly,

     First and foremost you should know: We want you to win. We want the team to win. We want Notre Dame to win.

     Why?

     We want you to win for the child in us, because it takes us back to that moment when we were young, and we sat with our fathers and our mothers and our siblings and our families and we cheered for the Fighting Irish. That child believed anything was possible, and that child learned about good and evil, about right and wrong. When we were young we believed that the good always could triumph. We believed that because we saw it in fiction, in the stories of our heroes, of our Supermen. Even more poignant for us was the triumph of good over evil in real life. The triumph of God, Country, and Notre Dame. Notre Dame united us, even if we were far from one another. It gave us strength even when we were alone, because we knew that there were more like us who believed. On Saturdays the Notre Dame brought us great joy, and we believed because the head coach, our leader, said things like this, then went out and did things like this. (I do not mean to be exclusive; I know for many that the seminal moment, or the defining moment, may have been this one or this one; in fact, it is this spanning and uniting of the generations that made it something to share.)

     Time marches on. Children grow up. Fairy tales fade away, and reality becomes real. While all that happened, one thing remained constant: Notre Dame. In fact, as we grew we learned that it was not just made of the gold helmets on Saturdays; we traveled to the place itself, and we saw this:

and we saw this:

and it seemed to shine even more brightly than in our dreams.

     We went to school, and we forged friendships, and we found new compatriots who cared about it the same way we did. We read Father Sorin's letter, and we knew that time had indeed proven him right, just as his faith told him it would, and that this university had indeed become "one of the most powerful means for good in this country."

     And while we did it all of this, while we grew up as people and grew together as a community and grew outward in our ranks, always there was football, a joyous expression and occasion for us to celebrate this University that could still prove to all the Miamis and USCs and Ohio States that winning could be accomplished the right way. We were the ones who still believed that the good could triumph. As students, we watched our own, our classmates and roommates and friends, represent us with their best, and we rewarded them with our best and unfailing support from the stands.

     Time marches on. Students graduate. The "Notre Dame Bubble" pops, and academia fades into the real world. Instead of praying together at the Grotto and spending late nights discussing our hopes and dreams, we work together in cubicles and spend our nights recovering for another day. We make new friends and new homes and new families, and we get farther from South Bend, but the things we learned there, and the people we me there, never leave us. And always there is football, to bring us back together, to allow us to celebrate again what we believe in, to reminisce on great memories and create new ones with those who are convinced, as we are, that winning on the field and off it can go hand-in-hand. We remind ourselves of Lou Holtz, who often said regarding Notre Dame: "If you were there, no explanation is necessary. If you weren't, no explanation is satisfactory." We were there.

     Time marches on. Football games are played. Past glories fade into memories. These are, of course, the facts of life. But still we have our University, and always there is football, to bring us back to those places. With each year that passes, more and more people tell us that Notre Dame is now irrelevant. They tell us that our faith in the program, in the team, in the university is misplaced, and that we cannot win without compromise. But that is not what we believe. Now, we look to share our beliefs with a new generation: with our children, and our grandchildren, and a new class of students, and your charges on the football team, who have chosen to take the more difficult, but more rewarding, path.

     If I may be somewhat over-the-top for a moment, the current ND student body, and its entire young fanbase, is like the multitudes of whom Jesus spoke to Thomas. Many of us have touched the wounds; we have seen the empirical evidence that ND can be great on the football field. However, those students, and our children, have seen precious little evidence that such things are possible, continue to believe. I admire them, and I want them to experience triumphs.

     I will take an aside here to note: you are not any of your predecessors. You are Coach Brian Kelly, and I hope that you continue to be. Your successful predecessors, the legends, all knew and understood what ND football meant to its faithful, and they knew and understood what ND itself means. Likewise, your immediate predecessor was one of us; he, too, prayed at the Grotto, cheered from the stands, and lived in the dorms. We knew he needed nothing explained to him. While you say the right things about Notre Dame being a special place, the ND family might be very pleased (and consequently supportive) to see you demonstrate a deeper understanding of what this place means, of the history and the legacy it carries.

     And so we have come full circle: we want you to win. There is a generation of young people who has never known the glory of Notre Dame in which so many of us believe. We want to share it with them, with our children and our families, the way our parents did with us. We want to teach them and tell them that our side, the young men who go to school and follow the rules and wear the gleaming gold helmets, can win, even in today's world. We are ND.

     The story goes that in 1879, the Main Building on the campus of Notre Dame burned down. Father Sorin, who had founded the school in 1842 and poured his life into it, preserving this tiny Catholic school in the Indiana woods, stood on top of the smoldering embers. He saw the entirety of his work reduced to rubble; he saw the complete demolition of his product and his dreams. It was finished; it would have to be cobbled back together, if it could survive at all. Instead of thinking any of these things, instead of giving up or turning away, Father Sorin summoned all of his faith, and he said: "We didn't build it big enough." Then he went out and built the iconic Golden Dome that still stands today.

     Coach Kelly, I know that you and the players have put everything you have into this football team. We all believe that you came out and gave it your all. The team, however, is 0-2. The building you created with the outstanding finish to last season, the one that you improved upon with your hard work during the offseason, has been burned to the ground. I would humbly submit that you didn't build it big enough. At Notre Dame, that means that you go out there and do it better next time. We want you to win. We have faith that Notre Dame will win.

Yours in Notre Dame,

HF