There were a lot of frustrating moments during Notre Dame’s tilt against Temple this past Saturday.
However, nothing got the hot takes flowing more than Brian Kelly pushing David Grimes back on the sidelines to avoid a 15-yard penalty. Basically, this became Purple Face 2.0. Congrats, football fans, you now have a new ND thing to overuse for your terrible GameDay signs.
Before I start on the incident itself, let’s talk about sideline protocol. I haven’t taken a snap in anything more than a student manager football game, but I’ve worked the sidelines for Notre Dame under two different head coaches (Ty Willingham and Charlie Weis) during my time as a manager and once for the Dallas Cowboys as a ball boy when Bill Parcells roamed the sidelines. I’ve seen, first-hand, how multiple head coaches at different levels expect their players – and their staff – to act during a game.
Beyond the head coach, the only people really allowed to approach the edge of the sideline are any assistant or player that is actively signaling something in/trying to relay something to the players on the field. Everyone else is expected to stay back at some boundary, whether it be a secondary line behind the sideline or the edge of the sideline itself. There is a coach – in my experience, it’s always been a strength coach as they aren’t actively calling in plays or tracking data – that patrols the sideline to ensure that boundary is respected.
The reason for this is simple. You don’t want the sideline crowded to obstruct the coaches calling in plays and you don’t want a stupid sideline penalty for a player or staff member wandering too close to the field of play either.
There is a corollary to this rule: The head coach should be the only one getting in a ref’s ear. He is responsible for anything that happens on his sideline. So if someone is going to get 15 yards for running their mouth at a ref, it’s going to be him.
With that said, let’s take a look at what happened on Saturday:
Soooo about this… https://t.co/PGs6TQZUq7
— Jim Weber (@JimMWeber) November 1, 2015
There’s a lot in that Vine, so let’s just take this step-by-step.
The first thing we see before Kelly comes flying into he frame is Grimes jawing at an official. Strength coach Paul Longo – who I assume is the man in charge of sideline sanity – tries to get in between the two. He’s trying to separate the two and even trying to gently push Grimes back. Grimes, however, doesn’t budge and keeps jawing away.
Enter Kelly, flying into the frame, a decision, I assume, that was made about 10 or so yards away from this situation.
He grabs and pushes Grimes back. Longo isn’t happy with Kelly and Grimes sure as hell isn’t either. Grimes goes from having hands in his pockets to trying to get Kelly’s hand off of him, popping off Longo’s visor in the process. Sheldon Day and a couple of assistants come in to get Grimes to back up and cool off.
First things first: Grimes has zero business saying anything to an official. Someone was going to have to step in and pull him away, period. Longo attempted, but it certainly wasn’t working to Kelly’s liking. Soon after the incident, Kelly and Longo were talking. It was clear from Longo’s initial reaction that he wasn’t happy with Kelly. But during that conversation, Kelly had a look of “What did you expect? You weren’t taking care of it,” on his face.
Kelly’s absolutely correct. The buck stops with him for anything that happens on the sideline. Make no mistake: If Grimes draws a flag, Kelly is roasted for failing to keep his sideline under control. Preferably, Kelly would never need to get involved in such situations in the first place.
But if push comes to…well…shove, the head coach will get involved to prevent a penalty. In fact, I’ve even seen Mr. IntegriTY himself physically get in between Kent Baer and an official against Pitt in 2004, a game full of terrible DPI flags thrown seemingly every pass. He pushed Kent back, yelled at him to get him to shut up, and then apologized to the official. (One thing that drove me nuts about that game was that I never saw Ty get after an official during the game and the team was audibly complaining about it as the game went on — but that’s a whole other issue).
I’ve seen people physically relocated on a sideline before. It happens and probably more than you’d expect. However, what makes this unique is the head coach having to be the one to do it at a dead sprint. If you want to know how “normal” such a situation is, just watch everyone else’s reaction. Van Gorder keeps his attention on the field and Day calmly assists in moving Grimes back.
And the “normalcy” I refer to is simply that emotions run high. This doesn’t just include games, but practices as well. It’s rare that cameras ever catch such things, so when things like that bubble to the public eye, it’s a little jarring. Even a show with incredible access like A Season With doesn’t completely capture that kind of environment. Quite frankly it can’t and not because of ND trying to over-edit the show, but because that wouldn’t be entertaining TV. (Believe me, witnessing that day-to-day grind complete with coaches’ launching verbal bombs becomes old hat rather quickly)
So when Kelly says something like this:
“They don’t know what happened,” Kelly said. “Typical of those that are just looking at the video without having any of the information.
“Only those that are clearly near the situation that have all the information can make those judgements. It’s an internal matter and we’re handling it internally.”
I certainly believe it. It’s impossible to capture everything in an easy-to-Vine clip. Grimes could’ve been warned about this before in the game or even in a previous week. Perhaps everyone on the sideline was a bit heated as the game went on and Kelly had enough of the entire situation. Or perhaps Kelly has felt Longo has been lax on the whole situation and it all came to a head Saturday night. Or maybe it’s as simple as an official warning Kelly a flag is about to be thrown the next time someone on the ND sideline pops off.
I’m not going to pretend to know the details that lead to this situation. However, I do know that a lot is being made of very little.
Would I have preferred Kelly handled the situation a bit gentler? Of course. Am I going to fault him for making this decision to prevent a penalty? Not one bit. Do I think Grimes deserves an apology? I have no clue, but I’m sure Kelly, Longo, and Grimes had a sit-down of some level about it. Kelly isn’t some madman shoving his players every other week like a Bob Knight-wannabe, so I’m not going to start treating him like it.
- Epilogue - January 3, 2022
- HLS Podcast Finale - January 2, 2022
- The Final Fiesta: Notre Dame vs Oklahoma State NCAA ’14 Sim - December 31, 2021
Big Benis
Brian Kelly is a purple faced turd burglar.
kev hurls
Where’s you evidence to – um… – back-that-up? EVERYONE SHUT UP AND LET BK WIN.
David Saint
lol a guy with a SN “Big benis” is calling others a giant tool? smh
Lisa
I’m confused. Views who as a giant tool?
irishJimmy
Could care less what he did! He has a right to control his sideline, especially if he thought it could result in a penalty. This is only being talked about because it is ND. If it was Urban Meyer a “Giddy Kirk Herbstreit would be drooling and talking about the intensity of Urban Meyer. If it was Saban or Harbaugh….the national media would be foaming at the mouth about what winners they are. Much ado about nothing….