Brian Kelly cracked a joke immediately following Notre Dame’s overtime win over Florida State on Sunday night, and the coach was surprised when he learned how some people reacted to it.
Kelly was not thrilled with the Fighting Irish after they blew a 38-20 third quarter lead and won by a field goal in overtime. When he was interviewed on the field by ESPN after the game, he spoke about his team’s execution — or lack thereof. Kelly joked that “maybe our entire team needs to be executed after tonight.”
Since it’s 2021, a bunch of people were offended or at least pretended to be. Kelly basically told those people to get a grip.
“I was kidding. It was tongue in cheek. It wasn’t funny?” Kelly asked, via Matt Fortuna of The Athletic. “It’s an old John McKay quote that he used after the game, so I was talking and making a joke about it. Why? It was taken serious? Are you people crazy?”
McKay was the first ever coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 1970s. A reporter once asked him what he thought of his team’s execution, and he hilariously responded that he is “in favor of it.”
Kelly botched the delivery of the joke, but the outrage was a little absurd.
“I was stealing one of his old quotes and being funny,” he added. “I guess nobody likes to be funny anymore. So yeah, if you want to take me to town on that, please do.”
Kelly has somewhat of a history of awkward exchanges with the media. This was, at worse, another one of those. Ironically, it was the execution of Kelly’s joke that fell flat.
