From ND Insider
With the kind of season we had, the first question out of everybody (was), ‘How long is coach Kelly here? Is this his last year? What kind of year does he have to have (in 2017)?’ ” Kelly said Wednesday of Swarbrick’s role.
“(Swarbrick) assured them there's no problems with the football program. ‘This is a program that is on solid ground. It was not the year that anybody wanted, (but) we're certainly not going to come in here and invest in all the (new) coaches we've invested in because we think we're in a short-term situation.
“'We're in a great situation here. We're going to build on the young players that we played last year, and we're going to return Notre Dame to where it should be.’ Again, I think that's the kind of support that we got.”
Jenkins specifically went out of his way to meet with Tagovailoa-Amosa and his parents during a midweek recruiting visit last week.
“(Usually), if he’s on campus, he’ll get involved,” Kelly said of Jenkins. “But in this one, he felt a very close, personal investment in that we had such a great feeling with (former Hawaii players) Manti (Te’o) and then Kona Schwenke’s family and what they brought culturally to our university, he wanted to be involved in it.”
Jenkins was also involved in the hiring of all six new assistant coaches and director of football performance Matt Balis.
“That was unprecedented,” Kelly said. “He hadn’t done that before. He did it with just coordinators in the past. But he did it with every one of them (this time).
“This was an investment from the top down. Everybody was on board with what we were doing. And it was a plan that was laid out by Jack and I, and it came to fruition in a really short period of time.”
With the kind of season we had, the first question out of everybody (was), ‘How long is coach Kelly here? Is this his last year? What kind of year does he have to have (in 2017)?’ ” Kelly said Wednesday of Swarbrick’s role.
“(Swarbrick) assured them there's no problems with the football program. ‘This is a program that is on solid ground. It was not the year that anybody wanted, (but) we're certainly not going to come in here and invest in all the (new) coaches we've invested in because we think we're in a short-term situation.
“'We're in a great situation here. We're going to build on the young players that we played last year, and we're going to return Notre Dame to where it should be.’ Again, I think that's the kind of support that we got.”
Jenkins specifically went out of his way to meet with Tagovailoa-Amosa and his parents during a midweek recruiting visit last week.
“(Usually), if he’s on campus, he’ll get involved,” Kelly said of Jenkins. “But in this one, he felt a very close, personal investment in that we had such a great feeling with (former Hawaii players) Manti (Te’o) and then Kona Schwenke’s family and what they brought culturally to our university, he wanted to be involved in it.”
Jenkins was also involved in the hiring of all six new assistant coaches and director of football performance Matt Balis.
“That was unprecedented,” Kelly said. “He hadn’t done that before. He did it with just coordinators in the past. But he did it with every one of them (this time).
“This was an investment from the top down. Everybody was on board with what we were doing. And it was a plan that was laid out by Jack and I, and it came to fruition in a really short period of time.”
