Notre Dame Football: Brian Kelly Apologizes to Players, but Should He Have To?

Brian Kelly sure isn't acting like the great college football coach that so many people have made him out to be.

There it is, I said it.

You can argue with me, fight with me, or come back with any claim you would like, but before you do, understand that there is a lot more to coaching than just winning, which Kelly hasn't done much of in his time at Notre Dame.

This past week, after an embarrassing loss to USC in which Trojan players accused Kelly and his Notre Dame of giving up, Kelly made an apology to his team and those who were offended by his comments about the players on the Notre Dame team who weren't recruited by him and his staff.

According to an article written by ESPN's news services, this is what Kelly said on Thursday.

"You can see the players that I have recruited, you know who they are," Kelly said. "We’ve had one class of kids that we’ve recruited that I’ve had my hand on."

The first question you have to ask is, why would he go ahead and say that?

The second question you have to ask is, should he have apologized for it?

Should he have to apologize? No, he doesn't have to apologize for anything.

But was it the right thing to do?, Yes, he should have, but either way, this is just another classic example of Kelly saying and doing the wrong thing while in college football's spotlight.

We all saw his sideline blowup during the Irish's Week 1 loss to South Florida. We all saw how he failed to call a timeout when his team was arguably still in the game last weekend against USC. And now we all see this.

Why does Kelly continue to say and do these things to belittle his team, when he knows that Notre Dame is and always will be in the national spotlight? Everything that he says will come out, which obviously wasn't the case when he coached at smaller programs like Central Michigan and Cincinnati.

I don't blame his players for ganging up on him or tweeting about their feelings on his comments. He said the wrong thing, and he just doesn't seem to get it.

The leash on Kelly's job seems to be getting shorter every day, and if he keeps this up, it really won't matter whether his recruits see the field, because at that point, he might not be the one coaching this team anymore.