Urban Meyer thinks Brian Kelly deserves more credit for Notre Dame’s rise than most fans want to give him.
That point came up during a recent episode of the Triple Option Podcast, when Meyer was speaking with Irish quarterback CJ Carr. The former Ohio State coach did not frame it as an outsider tossing out polite praise, either. He said he saw Notre Dame from the inside back in the 1990s and remembers a program that looked very different from the one people see now.
“1996, Coach Holtz hired me,” the famed former head coach told Carr. “Notre Dame back then, they didn't have a training table.
The players had to stay in the dorms for four years. A lot of the dorms were non-air-conditioned.
They did not pay the coaches. We got paid about half what other coaches got paid.”
He kept going from there, painting an even harsher picture of what he found in South Bend.
“They refused to give us cell phones. The facilities were awful.
I mean, horrible, infested with stuff. And I mean, just really, really bad.”
Then Meyer got to the heart of his argument. In his view, Notre Dame’s old way of doing things gave way to something much more modern, and Kelly was the one who helped push that shift.
“But it was a mindset that we're Notre Dame. We don't have to do like everybody else.
But I don't think Brian Kelly gets enough credit. He changed that.
What I've seen in the facilities … It's the best version of Notre Dame in my lifetime right now.”
Meyer was Notre Dame’s wide receivers coach from 1996 to 2000, and that stint helped launch the rest of his career. He landed his first head coaching job at Bowling Green in 2001, stayed there for two seasons, then moved on to Utah for two more before reaching Florida.
From 2005 to 2010, Meyer built himself into one of the sport’s top coaches before stepping down for “health reasons” while Florida was at its peak. Brian Kelly arrived at Notre Dame in 2010 after stops at Central Michigan and Cincinnati, where he spent three and four years, respectively.
Meyer returned to coaching at Ohio State in 2012 and spent seven seasons there before moving to the Jacksonville Jaguars three years after leaving the Buckeyes, again because of health reasons. His NFL run lasted one season, and after 2021 he moved into broadcasting.
Kelly left Notre Dame a decade after Meyer did, but Meyer’s point is rooted in what he saw firsthand and in what he says he has watched change over time. In his eyes, the program’s modern setup did not happen by accident, and Kelly deserves a bigger share of the credit than he usually gets.
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