New Notre Dame Coach Wants A Piece Of The Longhorns

​Brian Kelly is the new football coach at Notre Dame, having left his undefeated University of Cincinnati for greener pastures.

We're not sold entirely on him yet, but we haven't been entirely sold on an ND coach since Ara. Kelley does have an interesting resume -- he was involved in Massachusetts Democratic politics in his younger days, for one thing.

He's been making the media rounds. One question he's been asked several times is what would have happened if Colt McCoy had not been the luckiest SOB in the world, and his brain-freeze lob out of bounds against Nebraska had stayed in the air a second longer. Cincy would have been in the title game, and ND would have had to look elsewhere.

In an interview with ESPN radio, he elaborated on the matter a little more, by saying he wants Notre Dame to play UT in the future.

Why the Longhorns would ever want to play ND is another matter -- the Irish have whipped them eight out of the 10 times they've played. But hope springs eternal on the Forty Acres, we guess.

Said Kelly:

When you look at the teams that carry the same mission [as Notre Dame], Texas does that obviously. Those kinds of schools really are attractive to me. [Athletic director] Jack Swarbrick and I will sit down and look at our schedule as we move forward. I want to be around the best, because we're asked to be the best. And that's the kind of schedule I want.

We have absolutely no idea what Kelly means when he says ND and UT "carry the same mission," because generally when ND people talk about "mission" they mean graduating their football players. And not just the brainiacs sitting at the end of the bench in order to build up the team's graduation average.

But if UT and ND can arrange a home-and-home, that's terrific. We can only hope the Longhorns suffer their defeat graciously.