“I read the news today, oh boy. About a lucky man who…got to push the re-start button.”

Last week Brendan reviewed the South Bend Tribune’s annual ND Insider football magazine and on Sunday long-time beat reporter Eric Hansen unveiled his super in-depth look into a day in the life with Brian Kelly that is in said magazine. You should pick up a copy for yourself.

This article is incredible for the tremendous breadth it covers across so many facets of the Irish program. Here are some highlights worth talking about:

A total of 9 strength coaches (5 full-time and 4 interns) oversee smaller clusters of players during workouts to try and prevent anyone from “hiding” without full effort.

Players are broken up into SWAT (Spring/Summer Workout Accountability Teams) groups as the staff has pitted the players against themselves. They are judged on strength, speed, agility, discipline, academics, and conditioning. Players are also judged individually so as to expose weak-links and correct problems.

Players are also rated by three more categories: Satisfied, Hungry, and Starving. You don’t want to be satisfied where all freshmen who weren’t with the team in the spring will begin for the summer. There were 34 players in the “hungry” category led at the top by true freshman EE offensive lineman Robert Hainsey.

Kelly credits new assistant strength coach David Ballou with transforming senior Jay Hayes who had a problem staying on his feet due to orthotic issues. His problems were caught using a DARI motion capture tool.

Hansen enters a strength office with a video screen displaying the photo and a series of numbers of every player on the football team. The same screen appears in the player’s locker room, Kelly’s office, and can be accessed via smart phones. Players must input level of soreness, productivity of workouts, current weight, hours of sleep, and academic demand and stress level.

On this day senior Daniel Cage has a high stress level with just 4.5 hours of sleep. He’s recovering from surgery and is sent to the “fuel station” to drink a shake to help with post-surgery anti-inflammation.

Kelly claims the Irish program’s nutritional staff were ahead of the game in recent years before 4 of them were hired away to head other program’s departments.

Captains are now tasked with cleaning the locker room and players lounge with no outside staff help. They even got new vacuums!

Sections of the locker room seating are broken up into “blocks” with a “block captain” to develop leadership. Kelly maintains this isn’t a new idea but something they needed to stress again when alpha males leave the program.

There have been plenty of officially unofficial talks about a new indoor practice field for the football team. In this piece, Kelly says the most western field will be converted to a football-only indoor field complete with a video board to “recreate game atmosphere” in addition to a 76-foot peak to allow for kicking and punting. The new facility is set to open for the 2018 season. Numerous doors will be added to the new indoor facility on the eastern side to allow easy access to the remaining two outdoor football fields.

This field will be indoors for the 2018 football season.

The southern edge of the Gug (Notre Dame’s practice facility) will be expanded all the way to Courtney Lane (not super far but not an inconsequential addition either) turning that road into a pedestrian roadway with a walkway bridge connecting the Gug to the new indoor practice field.

The second floor of the Gug is getting a new kitchen and dining areas for the training table (the food is currently brought in from across campus) in addition to more academic suites for studying and tutoring.

The first floor of the Gug is getting a new locker room and weight room, presumably in the new addition. There will now be a football-only entrance while the current main entrance will be used for the Olympic sports who will have the Loftus Center to themselves now.

The last interesting bit of info is that former Notre Dame player Amber Selking is now with the team as a sports psychologist and mental performance consultant. She has positional and individual sessions with players in addition to meeting with coaches about their techniques.

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So much of this is weird, isn’t it? Taking it in a vacuum you can’t help but think all of these changes should seriously help the football program. Notre Dame may always trail some schools in some of these areas–particularly those who aren’t building additions to their practice facilities with study space–but there shouldn’t be that many programs doing so.

Some people are bothered by the rat race that college football has become in recent years. For me, this doesn’t really belong in that category. There may be some cool bells and whistles in the new practice locker room but I highly doubt anything will compare to the ostentatious and tribute to excess that we’re seeing in new facilities at Texas and elsewhere. However, doing such a large renovation of the Gug just 12 years after its unveiling leaves a poor taste in my mouth. Notre Dame absolutely has to stop building projects that are behind the times in only a matter of years. It’s cool that they’re correcting the issues now, though.

For sure, many will be bothered by the fact that an attention to detail was seemingly so lacking and so much of this stuff is needed today. I’m right there with you. It makes me raise an eyebrow that we could see a program that is more machine-like than at any point during the Kelly era. Nevertheless, I can’t help but think a bell has already been rung and the clock of change is only ticking louder and louder.

All the changes certainly won’t hurt when Chris Petersen takes over in the future, though.