Brian Kelly sat there, looking at his watch, his phone, and then the dashboard clock, in that order, for fifteen minutes. Outside his S.U.V., a hot wind and ragged rain fell in sheets, pushed by the ominous, black clouds moving in from the East. “Jesus Christ, Jack,” Kelly said to himself, “we all have things to do.” Just as he thought about dialing his boss’s cell, a quick, looming shape approached from behind and rapped a knuckle on the glass.
“Oh! Jack!” Brian painted a smile onto his face as he stepped out of the truck to embrace the AD and kiss him on both cheeks. Putting a touch of sarcasm into his voice for effect, Kelly stepped back to put some distance between them. He triggered his green Tonino Lamborghini Mito lighter and put it to the Fuente Rosado he had been chewing on for the better part of an hour. Drawing a puff and examining the pull of the orange glow, Kelly relaxed. “So, Jack. What brings two guys from the Gug all the way out here? Carroll Fucking Hall. You know I spoke here in 2011? If I walked back, I would have missed the Ireland trip.”
The AD, who had been watching coach go through the exercise of re-lighting his cigar in what was now a steady rain and gusting wind, laden with the scent of ozone, smiled weakly. “Walk with me, Brian.”
Kelly followed his boss’s lead, half-sheltering in his enormous, black golf umbrella. For his part, Kelly had some protection from his issue rain jacket and ball cap, but the rain was enough to make him question just what they heck Swarbrick had in mind.
They crossed down to the path that hugged the curve in St. Mary’s Lake and began walking, at least insofar as Kelly was concerned, back towards campus. Gulls and ducks fluttered their wings on the water or hunkered under the low branches, bowed with water-soaked leaves. The rain, now, was general.
“Brian, I wanted to talk to you someplace I could speak, as it were, freely.”
“I’m all ears, Jack.”
“This week, you may have heard, our friend in the South started running his mouth at us and the playoff system.”
The “friend” was Steve “The Ole Ball Coach” Spurrier. Spurrier was an old quarter-back who made his bones coaching Florida back in the ’90’s. Now at the head of the South Carolina and the ripe-old age of sixty-eight , he had enough talent in his freakish defensive tackle alone to make another run to the top of the table.
“Yeah, I heard. So what, Jack? The guy’s a fucking cartoon. He’s great for a quote, but come on.”
Swarbrick never turned his head while walked. He let the silence between them build, before he addressed Kelly again.
“Any talk about us joining a conference is bad for business, Brian. You know that. Or, at least you should.”
“Take it easy, Jack.” Kelly paused momentarily and considered his cigar then drew a quick breath in through flared nostrils. “Not for nothing, Jack, but what’s that smell? I didn’t want to say anything, but it wasn’t me and if it was you, you gotta get yourself checked out.”
Swarbrick continued to stare at the jogging path ahead of his Bruno Maglis but a slight smile escaped his lips. “I’m pretty sure it’s Morrissey Hall, Brian. Poor bastards. The place is a zoo with no shit shovels.”
After more softly-crunching steps along the path, sounds barely discernible over the whirling wind rush, thunder rumble, and rain taps, they paused across from the road from the Grotto. “What I was saying, is that I need this business with the SEC taken care of, Brian. It has to end this season.”
“Jesus Christ, Jack. Again with this Alabama bullshit? Sure, we got our asses handed to us, but did you watch the rest of the fucking season, Jack? In case you missed it, we were undefeated and I got two kids on defense who are from the South, who could start on any fucking team in the country. So don’t give me this ‘the SEC is here and everyone else is here’ shit again.” Cigar smoke swirled around them.
“Brian, I don’t care if we lost in the Super Bowl. Losing to Alabama by twenty-eight was not good for the program. It let those hayseeds and half-wits keep yapping their single-toothed gums about ‘ESSSEEESEE speed’ and all that nonsense.”
Kelly broke into a grin. “You know, Jack, that wasn’t a bad Paul Finebaum impersonation there. You may have a future at the Blue Chip Casino if, you know, this whole AD thing doesn’t work out.”
Swarbrick stepped close to Kelly, his eyes meeting his directly. “I know you’re trying to be funny, but save it for Shiloh Park, alright? You make it your top priority, capisce? I don’t care what you have to do.”
Kelly interrupted, “Jack, I’m not hearing this, right?”
Swarbrick pressed closer, intent now, his voice a steeled whisper. “You leave the NCAA to me. We’re still Notre Dame, Brian, but the gloves are off now. No one questions my place at the table, not now that we’re so close and playoff decisions need to be made. We’re going to do it better and cleaner than everyone else, but you let me handle that end of the business. You take care of the X’s and O’s and I’ll take care of the A, B, C’s. Got it?”
Kelly considered the angry lake surface as the rain slackened, then died. “Yeah. I got it. I mean, that opening ‘Bama drive, Jack. We stuff ’em, then we get burned deep and then a fucking face mask and then we jump off-sides? I mean what the fu…”
Swarbrick held up his left index finger, having collapsed his umbrella. “You handle the X’s and O’s, Brian. I’m still trying to figure out what a ‘dog’ linebacker is.”
With that, the AD looked quickly to his left and right and darted across the road, disappearing into the shadows cast by the Grotto. Kelly was left alone to ponder his new charge and his sudden solitude in the middle of Notre Dame.
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Rob
Good stuff Bayou.
NDtex
I few more of these episodes and every time I see Kelly on the sidelines, I’m going to imagine him having an internal monologue similar to this style.
Love it.