kelly

Coach Brian Kelly has a reputation for building winning teams and emphasizes treating women with respect. He is involved in his community and has donated to the university's Breast Cancer Research Center. He discusses his background growing up in a traditional Catholic home and how his faith has shaped him. He pursued a career in politics before realizing his passion for coaching. He believes that success in life and football comes from working hard every day, not just on game days. He focuses on developing young men and the importance of family. Coach Kelly has established a reputation for building winning teams. He has compiled a 148-54-2 record in 17 seasons as a head football coach. And he is certainly off to a great start here in Cincinnati. But that rule, treat women with respect, shows he has a special mission emphasizing a moral dimension that develops athletes beyond their football skills. Not surprisingly, Coach Kelly is also a member of the American Football Coaches Association Ethics Committee. There's another indication of Coach Kelly's approach to doing what's right. Public records show he recently contributed $50,000 to the university's Breast Cancer Research Center. His wife, Paki, is receiving treatment for this disease. Coach and his wife are parents of three children and are members of St. Andrew Parish in Milford. As you are about to learn, Coach Kelly is a charismatic individual with an engaging personality. He is as comfortable involving himself in his community as he is giving orders on the sideline. Coach Kelly will tell us how his faith impacts the young men in his program. Gentlemen, please welcome Coach Brian Kelly, a truly unique big-time college football coach. Thank you, Bobby. Thank you. Thank you. I want to make sure everybody knows that Gus was one heck of a quarterback. John Carroll. It is certainly great to be here this morning. And when I moved to Cincinnati a year ago, I didn't expect all this snow. But I'm certainly happy to have this snow because there are no tee times today. And because of that, maybe we have a great crowd. But I wanted to be here. And as I was saying earlier, it's so important for me to be in the community but to be one of you in the community. And we are one in the same. And I want to talk about that this morning. And I think a lot of times you see me, I'm either on TV or on the sideline, and we're looking at success in Bearcat football. But I want to talk a little bit about how we are one in the same, a little bit about my background and where my faith has come from. I'm an Irish Catholic from Boston, Massachusetts. And my upbringing in a traditional values home has really brought me to where I am today. I went to St. Rose Parish. I can tell you about all the things that went on as a young kid. And one of my memories of growing up in Chelsea, Massachusetts, was that every other month I went to the high noon mass at St. Rose. And maybe some of you will remember high noon mass being in Latin. And as a young kid growing up, going to mass in Latin was difficult to say the least. But those memories of growing up and developing my faith, from there I went to St. John's Preparatory School in Danvers, Massachusetts. I was taught by the Zaverian Brothers. I was exposed to a quality of education that, again, set in motion those building blocks for who I am today. From there I went to Assumption College and was in an academic environment that was taught by the Assumptionist Order. And the values, again, of faith and spirit and education were, again, taught to me on a day-to-day basis. So I think you can see that just in my background, in my schooling, and in the environment that I was in on a day-to-day basis, along with my parents and being brought up in a traditional values home, helped shape who I am today. And those experiences, I know you've all shared them in some other degrees, but they are one in the same. So along that road of building my faith and spirit and who I am today, it took me somewhere. And it took me, and of all places, when I graduated from college, into politics. And my first two years out of college, I worked on Gary Hart's campaign, who ran for president. And I think we all know a little bit about monkey business, if you followed politics back in the 80s. I had nothing to do with the monkey business. But as I think about it, if I had something to do with it, there probably wouldn't be as much monkey business, and who knows, we would have changed the course of history. So I try not to look back on those things. But the experience of being on a national campaign and working with Gary Hart, I thought, in going through my educational experiences in my degree major, that that undergraduate degree in politics meant that it was going to be a natural progression for me to get into politics. So that's why I tested those waters, and I found out after a couple of years that it wasn't for me. And I don't want to get into the specifics other than to say that I didn't have the passion. It wasn't what got me motivated on a day-to-day basis. What motivated me was working with young men, the ability to teach and educate and develop. And it was at that time where I was making back in 19, I think this is 1988, 86, excuse me, that I was making $35,000 a year back then, which was pretty good money. But I felt like there was something missing, and that missing part was the coaching and being around. I was a college player, and, of course, the longer I'd been out, the better I thought I was. I wasn't that good. That's why I got into coaching. But it's pretty clear that that was my passion. That's what I wanted to get into. And so I loaded up my escort and took a job from Massachusetts, took a job in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Allendale, Michigan at Grand Valley State for $3,200 a year. And, yeah, pretty smart move. Good business sense I had. But it was the fulfillment in that very first day that I had that I knew that that was where I needed to be. It was, and again, I don't want to use this term and throw it around loosely, but it was that calling for me to be around young men, to develop and teach, and I followed that calling. And I followed it to Allendale, Michigan. And the interesting part about it is that I took a job at $3,200 a year as a graduate assistant, and three years later I was named the head football coach at the age of 27. And so that's not normal. The normal progression does not happen that way wherein three years later you're a head football coach and you're leading that. So you can see where I'm going with this is that there was clearly a path, and the strength and the spirit that I had built through my Catholic upbringing really helped me to be that leader at 27 years old. I certainly wasn't sure about some of the things on a day-to-day basis, but what I was sure about was that I was doing the right thing by educating. And so over that period of time, now 17 years of being a head football coach, we come to Cincinnati. And we've been here about 14 months. And what we found about Cincinnati is that this is a town that is extremely passionate about athletics, about family, about all the things that we're going to talk about today. There's an incredible passion. You can't find a better area to raise a family. I've got three young kids that absolutely love where we live, a wife that's very happy on a day-to-day basis. We can't be in a better situation. So we're around the right people. So when I got the opportunity to speak here today, I wanted to do that because this is the reason why we're being successful in Cincinnati, is because we have passionate people like yourself that are out here on a Saturday to develop that fellowship and are also passionate about athletics. So there is a selfish motive for me to be here today, and that is to talk to my fans. Because at the end of the day, it's okay to be passionate about that. As long as you know this, it's cool to be Catholic. It's cool to be Catholic. And so as we look at where we are as a family here in Cincinnati, we really now can be comfortable in allowing our family to grow. And for me to work on, I have two families. I have my family at home, and obviously I have a football family. And I'm sure everybody reads the paper, and my public contract is out there, and everybody can see how much money I make. That, to me, is the money they pay me is not for football. That's easy. The money they pay me is to stay away from my family. For the amount of time that I have to spend away from my family, that's what they need to pay me for, because I've got a 10-year-old, I've got a 7-year-old, I've got a 6-year-old that need a dad there, and I'm not there as much as I need to be. So whatever that number is that they pay me, it's because they keep me away from my family, because I've got two families that I work with on a day-to-day basis. I've got a wife that's just absolutely incredible, that can balance raising a family and having twice now battled cancer, her second bout through. And you don't go through that unless you have a strong faith, a strong belief, that the Lord is only going to give you so much that you can handle. And as a family, we've been able to handle a lot in this first year. So let me take you towards where I really want to go and leave you with the message that I want to leave you with, and that is I think you all see me on Saturdays. We talk about our football program. We talk about winning. We talk about a Big East championship, and that has a great place one day a week. One day a week. It's that one day in church. It's that two hours or one hour in church. And is it important, obviously, that one day of playing a football game? Yes, it's important. That one day in church, yes, it's important. I want to talk about the other six days in the week, because those are the most important days. You don't win in life, you don't win on Saturdays, if you're just going through it on Saturdays or Sundays. If that's all you do, if it's all that you do is go to church on Sunday or show up for the game on Saturday, there's something missing. And what I want to talk about are those pieces. We tell our kids we work on winning every day. And how do you work on winning? Well, we develop our players six days out of the week so they're ready for weeks, that one day in the week. And leading up to those six days, we work on what I call the fantastic five. Number one, we work on young men. Again, understand my audience, 17 to 21-year-old men, young men, full of testosterone. Sometimes, not at that level, but just an eager, anxious group of young men that we really have to corral and work on developing intellectually. They're going to college. They're at college for the first time. And so making sure that they understand the value of their education, as I did when I grew up. Now, I wasn't the greatest student in the world, I will tell you that, but I understood the value of an education. I understood about being on time, getting up and really going to class and getting your work done. I understood because of the traditional values that I was brought up in and that I didn't want anything given to me. I was going to earn it. And I wasn't a scholarship player. And a lot of our players today feel like they're entitled. And so we try to break that entitlement of being that scholarship player by teaching them and making sure they understand the value of an education. If they're getting their education paid for, there's a responsibility on their end for them to be the best they can be. So working on that on a day-to-day basis, that intellectual development of going to class, being on time, making sure that they're thorough in everything that they do. And then one of the golden rules that I have is to make sure that our kids are doing it honestly and fairly. There's one thing that will break the trust of you being in our football program, and that is if you cheat. We're not going to have that in our football program. There is no place for it. We want our kids to do their work, do it right, and make sure that they understand the value of their education. Secondly, we're going to develop them spiritually. And when we use that term spiritually, what does that mean? Well, keep in mind, I have 105 young men from different socioeconomic backgrounds, different parts of the country, white, black, Hispanic. As a matter of fact, 40% of our football team is African American. So we are a melting pot of different personalities. And to bring them all together, bringing them together to develop them spiritually means many different things. But here's what it means at its core, and here's how I try to explain it to our football players when we talk about developing them as young men. First, we talk about value of an education and develop them intellectually. Secondly, that spiritual development, what we're looking for and what we are going to get from our kids is that they become other-centered, that they start thinking about not just themselves. In today's society, it's so easy for them to think about the immediate gratification about themselves. It's easy to do that. And everything around them, the trappings of the Internet and television and society and the class system of all those things that happen on a day-to-day, it's easy to fall in that trap. So we're there immediately to start teaching our players about being other-centered. And that spiritual development means different things to different football players that we have in our group. The first thing that we do is we make sure that all of our players are in the community. We have a program called Cats in the Community. And our cats in the community are doing different things under the radar. We don't like to have it as a public record because that's not the point. The point is for us to develop our young men to be other-centered. Whether they're reading at local elementary schools or they're working at the soup kitchen or they're volunteering their time during Thanksgiving, they are going to be in the community. We're going to have our football players thinking about other people and not being about themselves as the center of their universe. Secondly, we want to avail to them the opportunity for them to grow in their own faith. And again, we have different avenues. We have Athletes in Action that is part of what we do on a day-to-day basis. Pete Ehrlich is in our football program representing Athletes in Action on a day-to-day basis. He's in the weight room. He's in the hallway. He's at the lunchroom. And why is he there? He's there to help those young men that are reaching out, that can be there immediately, not in two weeks, not when you make an appointment, but right there at that moment to help them develop their faith. We have Bible study led by William Inge on my staff. And when I got to the University of Cincinnati, Thursday night Bible study, Thursday night Bible study, we had four players at our first Thursday night. The last Thursday before we played Southern Mississippi at the hotel, we had 63 players at Bible study. Why? Because it's sharing. It's the ability to share their story. And it's an environment for our players to feel comfortable and that they understand that it's okay to follow their faith and to let their faith grow. It's okay because it's okay with Coach Kelly because it starts with the environment that we create for our football players that it makes it okay, that it's not something that you need to do in private. It can be amongst your peers. And so it's grown to that level because it's an acceptable part of the development and working on winning every day. The spiritual growth of our football players is Panama to our success. And again, I talk about Saturday. How do you get to Saturday? It's what you do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, leading up to that day. And I can't tell you how important Thursday night is and Bible study and the ability to really step up to the plate and talk about your experiences. And so that development is so important. And we try to educate our players. Today, if you open up the paper and you read the New York Times bestseller list, you have the first three of them are self-help books. Well, I got a book that's free in most hotel rooms. And that book, it doesn't cost. And on Thursday night, it's right there for you. And so what we were most proud of more than anything else is that our players were carrying the right books around. They were carrying the right books. And again, it doesn't necessarily mean that we have put our players in a position better than anybody else. That's not what we're saying. We're saying that that is our responsibility. That falls on my shoulders as a head football coach to develop our players spiritually. And it doesn't end there. Because we also have the responsibility to developing socially and making good decisions on a day-to-day basis. The simple traditional values that I know that are taught in every family today that carries Christianity as an important element in their lifestyle, those traditional values are the link to making good decisions. And our players know this. They know this for certain, that we have three rules. And we put them up on a board in our locker room. We have three rules. I do not have a big book of don't do this, you can't do that. I've been down that road. I've got three kids. Add another one so they can break it. I've got three. Number one, and it was talked about in the opening remarks, is one, treat women with respect. Number two, do not lie. And number three, do not steal. And if there is a message there, I think we can all look back on where that is grounded in who I am today and my background and growing up in a traditional values home and a Catholic education. Those three things will get you a ticket out of our program. You will not be invited into our house if you break one of those three rules. Because let's keep in mind, we are teachers. It's easy to send somebody on their way. It's easy to kick somebody out of the club. It's easy to do that. It's hard to work with those that are making mistakes. As long as we hold them accountable on a day-to-day basis and you don't break one of those three rules, we're going to work with you at our football program and teach you the right thing to do on a day-to-day basis. So I want players that understand that when they put that jersey on that says Cincinnati and they go out and play on Saturday, they're representing me, my family, everybody that follows college football, that they represent us on a day-to-day basis. That is an enormous responsibility for them to see. And for them to see it, what do they have to be? They've got to be other-centered. They've got to think about how other people would perceive their actions, which opens up the door for what? Leadership. Leadership. That, to me, is what teaching those social responsibilities comes back to when a young man that's 18 years old can grab another peer, another football player, and pull them out of a bad situation. That's when you know that you've got something special happening. People talk about it all the time. How do you get your team to come together? It's a four-letter word. It's a four-letter word. It's called care. When your football team cares about each other, when they start caring about each other, you're going to start winning. So it's our responsibility on a day-to-day basis to make certain that that environment, that positive environment is there. And I can't do it myself. So I have to be able to put together a staff that espouses the same beliefs that I have through player development. So when I put together a staff, we all have to be talking about the same things. We can't have a coach that's in there just worried about how he plays on Saturday and how his backpedal is or how he catches the football. So it's a pretty easy interview process for me. When I sit down with a gentleman to interview him for a position on my staff, I don't care what he knows about the Xs and the Os. I care that he knows about the Jimmys and the Joes. I care that he understands about people and that he understands about young men and developing young men. Those are the people that I want on my staff. I hired a gentleman from this area, Kerry Combs, Coleraine High School, won two state championships, and that's all fine. But he is a spiritual man, one that understands how player development is core to winning at the end of the day. And those are the kinds of guys that I have working with our players on a day-to-day basis. Because, again, when that locker room, when you walk in there and you have players, other centers, caring about each other, then you have the seeds to success. Now, certainly we have to develop our players physically. We have to be able to develop their skills. I'm not the head football coach of the band, so I've got to develop their skills. Their mom and dad would expect that if they come to the University of Cincinnati that we develop the skills that they have. They're God-given gifts. It is important and incumbent upon me as a teacher, as an educator, as a leader to develop their gifts and for them to understand that they have a gift. As I understood when I made that decision to go to Allendale, Michigan, and give up a $35,000 a year job, that I had a gift. I had a calling to teach and develop. And it was important that today that our players recognize that they have a gift and develop that gift and make certain that they're committed to developing that gift. And so all of those things together get us ready for Saturday. Those are the days, the Mondays, the Tuesdays, the Wednesdays, and the Thursdays and Fridays that I talk about. I know that our football team is poised for success when I go in and hear from William Inge that we had 62 players at Bible study on Thursday night. I have a pretty good Friday. I have a pretty good workout on Friday because I know that our team is coming together. And all I ask for in return are some very, very simple things from our players. I've told you what I would do for you, how we will develop you intellectually, spiritually, socially. We'll develop your skill. And then physically, we're going to develop you physically. And today, physically development is about nutrition. It's about taking care of your body. It's about making sure that you get proper rest. And that goes hand in hand with taking care of God's gift that you have. And all I ask in return are the same five things. Number one, do you care? Do you care about being the best you can be? Do you care about how you're perceived on a day-to-day basis? Do you have that passion that allows you within our program to be other-centered? So I get to pick. I get to pick. I get to go out there and find those players. And it's not about how fast they are. It's not about how much they bench press or how many touchdown passes. Certainly, if I can get these five traits with that, hey, let's go. We're going to recruit the best we can recruit. But I'm going to tell you, when you look in the paper and you go online and you look at the kids and you go, well, how come Cincinnati's recruiting him? And he's only got two stars by rivals. Well, you know what those Internet sites don't do? They don't sit in the home. They don't sit in the guidance counselor's office. They don't talk to the janitor. They don't talk to the opposing coaches. We do. And you can't find those things on video, okay? You can throw on a video and watch a guy run fast. I think I could throw on a video right now and I'd probably get 99.9% of you in here to go, yep, he's a pretty good football player, coach. Yep, he can run fast. But does he have the traits necessary for him to develop in the manner that we want him to develop? So, number one, he's got to care. He's got to be passionate about what he does. Number two, I've got to be able to trust you. And as we know, trust is a two-way street. They've got to be able to trust me and my staff, and on a day-to-day basis, that we can be counted on. If we're going to ask trust from our players, they've got to be able to trust their coaches first. So I've got to be able to trust. And how do you find that? Well, those are the questions I ask. I'll ask a counselor, hey, can I trust that when nobody's looking for the first time, and he goes away to college, and he doesn't have anybody waking him up, you think we can trust that he's going to get up in the morning? Yes, sir, I think we can. Or if I'm talking to his high school coach, can we trust that he's going to work out when we're not around? Because in college football, we don't get very much time with our kids. Right now, in terms of workouts, the NCAA only gives us eight hours a week with our kids. Eight hours a week. Now, they can come up to our office, they can spend time, but in applying their trade, eight hours. So you better get football players that you can trust. That's absolutely crucial. They've got to be committed. They've got to be committed to their education. They've got to be committed to the year-round conditioning that they need to be the best that they can be. We want them to do the right thing. So when we're out recruiting, if we don't believe that you're going to do the right thing and make good decisions, then that's going to be a red flag. Again, I don't care how fast you are, how many touchdown passes, that's going to be a red flag for us. And finally, and how this comes full circle, to being at St. Rose, to being at St. John's Prep, to being at Assumption College, to being in the Traditional Values Home, to being a Catholic, to having a spirit that allows me to follow my calling, observe the Golden Rule. Treat others the way you would want to be treated. And by the way, those fantastic five are what we call the Bearcat Mission Statement. Our mission statement is about those values. So when you walk in our locker room, other than the unmistakable smell of a men's locker room, a football locker room, you're going to see the Bearcat Creed. You're going to see the Bearcat Commandments, which we talked about, the three that you don't break. And you're going to see the Bearcat Mission Statement. And that they see every single day. And that clarity of message, hearing it every day, over and over and over again. You know what? That's okay. By golly, that's okay. Because in today, you can get 18 different messages if you just change the channel 18 times. And if you follow the elections, you get probably 20 different messages. But we're going to give you one. And that clarity of message is about player development on a day-to-day basis. And that, to me, is the secret of success. It's not Saturday, though, boy, is it exciting when you're throwing the ball around and you're scoring points and you're taking it away and you're filling Nippert Stadium and we all can come together as Cincinnatians, all as Ohioans, to come together on a Saturday and really enjoy it. And you'll enjoy it because you know what the secret is. You know what we're doing behind the scenes in the development of young men. And so when they go out on a Saturday, you'll invest time to go watch them play because you know what Coach Kelly's doing on a day-to-day basis. You'll know what his ministry is. You know what he's trying to achieve through his own personal beliefs and instilling in those young men on Saturday. And if you watched us play, we played with a passion. We played with great excitement because we're able to develop our players on a day-to-day basis. And so when it got to Saturday, Saturday was fun. Saturday was that two hours that they could go out and really enjoy themselves because let's keep it in perspective. With so many things going on today in the world, it's just a game. It's just a game. It's what you do the other six days of the week. And the selfish motive for me to be here today was to give you a little bit of background in my faith and how the Holy Spirit has moved me to my calling and how it helps me shape and develop young men today so that on a Saturday when we have an opportunity to come out, we know what to expect from the Bearcats, young men that are developing on a day-to-day basis, that have grounded principles and values that we all share in this room. It makes it a whole lot easier to go and watch them on a day-to-day basis. I want to thank everybody for giving me this great platform and opportunity to speak from my heart about who I am, my family, and where we came from to be at this point at the University of Cincinnati. And we've raised the bar. There's no question about that. But it's easy to raise the bar when you know what you have in front of you because I'll leave you with this. If you know what you're doing, and I think I've got a pretty good plan, if you love what you're doing and you trust what you're doing, then your life and what you do on a day-to-day basis is real easy. So for me, it's easy being the head football coach at the University of Cincinnati. Thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you.