Notre Dame and Brian Kelly Perfectly Happy to Put Kids in Harm's Way [UPDATED]

UPDATE: Notre Dame announced it will switch to online classes for the next two weeks.

No word on how this move will affect the football team or other student-athletes.

While a lot of college football programs have traditions of abhorrent and dangerous behavior, only one school has accepted the death of students as just the price of doing business. Notre Dame has always held itself above every other college program though, even if it lost its place atop the industry decades ago, so it’s no wonder that they’re the ones willing to go the furthest in preservation of what they hold most dear.

Perhaps no school is better equipped to keep on trucking into and through a football season while the entire campus around it is turning into a toxic Petri dish. Remember, no changes really came after they forced Declan Sullivan into a scissor-lift to film practice and it killed him. Brian Kelly thought they had a good practice that day. Their handling of Lizzie Seeberg’s rape case, that caused her to kill herself, didn’t really cause any changes either. Kelly claimed he didn’t make major decisions and the administration would handle everything, and proceeded to not even think about even benching Prince Shembo. This is Notre Dame after all, so if you don’t actually put on the golden dome over your skull, your life is merely in service of those who do.

Cases on the Notre Dame campus have spiked to 147 in just a week after classes opened, thanks to one off-campus party. Half of the tests conducted Sunday on campus came back positive. You’d think that head coach Kelly would be a bit concerned about the safety of his players, at the very least. Ha, just kidding, you or I never thought Brian Kelly has the least bit of humanity to him, which doesn’t make him much different than any other college coach.

But don’t worry, Kelly’s got a plan! Everybody has a sub, and much like a rash of injuries or slumps, the Fighting Irish will just deal with whatever comes. Next man up, even if the man before is actively coughing up a lung or his heart will be scarred for life. Even if that’s a disease that could hamper their players’ lives forever, or even kill them. Just another thing that we have to be a team over, in Kelly’s world. How far away are we from having replicants for every player and coach in South Bend? Closer than we think, if the Notre Dame faculty of course wouldn’t curse replicants as the devil’s work and throw holy water at them. Also, declaring something the Devil’s work and throwing holy water at it is a 300-level course at ND.

We’ve obviously lost our minds and souls when North Carolina was open all of a week before it figured out it wasn’t safe to have students around. Unless those students are a cash cow for the school. If you’re viewed as a paying student, they’ll at least wave their arms in some indication that they care. If you’re viewed as a constantly bill-spewing ATM by the school, then you can keep right on heading to practice, Chumley.

Kelly may go ahead and praise his players that they’ve followed the protocols set and have only had two positive tests, but they’ve only been on campus with the rest of the present student body for a week. There will be other parties (and if you’re asking why anyone would go out of their way to attend a Notre Dame party presumably filled with Notre Dame students, which sounds about as entertaining as eating toenails, I don’t have any answers for you other than INDIANA. Also, eating toenails was what Tommy Rees majored in while there). There will be other temptations, other causes for players to leave their secure area, as it were. They’re kids. But apparently that’s OK, because Kelly has a plan.

The only plan that will keep everyone safe is to send everyone home and try this all again at some point in 2021. But what is Notre Dame in the fall without football? Apparently nothing, because they’ve traded in students’ actual lives for it before. This is old hat to Old Notre Dame.

Note: The original headline on this story has been changed.