Friday Free for All Mailbag happening right here on the Irish Breakdown podcast brought to you by our friends over at Van Duel.

We got another question up.

Keep us rolling here.

From Jay Melvin.

Brian, do you think the standard of being the Notre Dame coach has been elevated?

Let's say hypothetically, Coach Marcus Freeman leaves in a few years.

Notre Dame will not settle with mediocrity again, like the BK regime and before.

Well, let's be clear. I don't like doing a revisionist history, even if it means that I point

out things that I supported that I no longer support. I absolutely supported Brian Kelly

being the head coach at Notre Dame when he was hired in 2010.

And I defended Brian Kelly for the first several years of his career.

So even in some of those down years, I was always, well, don't worry once he gets this going, he's going to get here.

You can absolutely find articles or message board posts way back in 2009, 2010, 2011 where I defended Brian Kelly.

Obviously, I eventually changed my view as I was around the team more, learned more things,

and saw that he became, you know, what he was because I don't think he was the same person,

but I don't think he had the same fire to grow at Notre Dame the way he did at Cincinnati in different places, because those were always more short term. You know, Central Michigan was always a means to getting to that next level, which is what Cincinnati was, which is a means to get to Notre Dame. So I don't, I don't think BK was settling at all. I think that at the time was a great hire.

I think it made a lot of sense.

I think it was a strong hire.

I think Brian Kelly had attributes that I think could have won at Notre Dame if his own ego could have got out of the way.

So I don't think Brian Kelly was hired.

He was the big name at that time.

So now, if you want to point out to what his tenure became, okay, that's a different

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