Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly sat at his desk, staring blankly ahead. His offensive coordinator, Chuck Martin, too, was distracted in thought. They each understood that the other was fixated on the same thing: Tommy Rees’s neck.

In his bed, Tommy Rees wore the broken expression of an athlete dying young, his body wracked with pain and Vicodin. Next to him, in the easy chair, Andrew Hendrix sat silently, his eyes closed.

“Hendy.” Tommy said.

“Yeah?” Hendrix didn’t open his eyes and his face was devoid of expression.

“You awake?”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna stop killing yourself about last night?”

Hendrix opened his eyes and took a drink from his water bottle. “No.”

“Everything’s gonna be alright, you know that.”

“Do I?”

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Kelly eyes locked into Martin’s. “When do the docs get here?”

“Dunno. They’re doctors. They move at their own pace.”

“Ratigan’s a player, dammit. He knows I gotta know right now.”

Martin picked up the telephone receiver on the desk and pushed one of the preset buttons. The wall clock ticked audibly. He placed his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered “message machine” to Kelly. “Dr. Balint? It’s Chuck. BK needs to know something soon. Call us right away.”

Doctors Chris Baliant and Brian Ratigan huddled together in the radiology suite, looking at the flat screens and clicking through MRI images. The enlarged certain ones, focusing on the whispery shadows and gradations of gray.

Baliant’s iPhone buzzed and vibrated, skittering across the meeting table behind them. He looked behind him and then back to the screen. “It’s them.”

Ratigan never looked away from the images. “They’ll have to wait.”

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Malik Zaire looked at his phone and the text message from Coach Kelly.

“My office. Now.”

The post The Irish – Episode Thirteen – Tommy’s Bones appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Notre Dame head football coach Brian Kelly stopped at the Gug and went to his office, took a shower, and sat on his couch, smoking a cigar and sipping his whiskey in the dark, looking out at the breaking dawn of a South Bend Sunday morning. He had no idea how long it was before he recognized the knock.

“Enter!” he huffed.

“Coach.”

Kelly could only discern the frames of Prince Shembo and Jaylon Smith from their contrast with the light behind them.

“Coach, we need to talk.”

Kelly thought about getting up, but realized he was only in a towel, so he snuffed out his cigar and downed his whiskey. “Have a seat guys. I…. I just showered.”

While Jaylon sat, Shembo stood, at parade rest, in the door. “It’s okay coach, we’re intruding on you.”

Kelly thought about that, watching the blue smoke curl from the trammeled end of his cigar, the grey piles of ash clumped in the crystal ashtray. “I make huge amounts of money off the labor of these guys and they’re intruding on me. Whatever.” He spoke, his eyes aimed at a spot on the wall equidistant from either player. “Okay, then. Why the morning meeting? Prince? Jaylon?”

Somewhat surprisingly, Jaylon Smith, the freshman spoke up first. “Coach, we think something’s wrong.”

Kelly interrupted. “I don’t. If anything, over the weeks, I’ve seen improvement. And for you two, of all players, to be here, after the games you’ve had. I mean, I appreciate wanting to get better more than anyone, but, you guys’ve been playing with the boys and killing it.”

“Coach,” said Shembo, his entire body a silhouette with eyes against the hallway light. “Coach, it’s nothing wrong with the players. It’s something wrong with Coach Diaco.”

Kelly leaned back against the couch cushion, his eyes closed so as not to betray his emotion. “That’s a serious statement, guys. Why should I think something’s there when it’s not?”

Shembo began speaking, his eyes, too, fixed and distant. “Coach, if we did not think there was something very wrong, we would not be here. I have noticed a change… this season is different… and it’s not because of no Kap… no Manti… it’s nothing to do with who isn’t here, but everything to do with who IS here.”

“In Nigeria,” Shembo kept on, “there is a story of a woman with two skins… one beautiful… one ugly.”

Kelly opened his eyes. “Enough!” He stood, startled and angry. “Go to sleep! You’re both exhausted.”

While Smith scampered from the room, Shembo stared at Kelly and slowly turned, following his younger teammate in deliberate steps.

Kelly adjusted the towel around his waist and walked to the blinds, opening them to the growing light of day. “Jesus Christ. First it was a talking fish, now it’s the ju ju man of Nigeria.”

His fingers let the rod go and it clattered on the blinds. He stepped back, considering what his players told him and pondered his next moves.

The post The Irish – Episode Eleven – Ju Ju Man appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Despite the loss and the post-game obligations and the bus ride and even the turkey sandwich that had exceeded its sell-by date by a few days, Notre Dame’s football coach, Brian Kelly, found it easy to fall asleep. As his body’s systems entered their sleep-state and he drifted off, he retained for the first time in many months, the odd sensation of recognizing that he had started dreaming. Paqui, his wife, next to him, would have panicked at the anguished, despairing look on her slumbering husband’s face.

Early spring in Everett, Massachusetts, was always a difficult season. In one twenty-four hour period, you could expect rain, sun, sleet, and snow, just not necessarily in that order. In the dream, it was the same. Brian watched his Timberland’s carry him over the crushed clam shells lining the Mystic River promenade, small puddles of snow melt squishing from under the treads. To his left, the old river flowed to the sea and the mix of salt and industry filled his nostrils, the air carrying those smells cold enough to make him glad he wore his leather jacket and turtleneck.

He stopped at a row of riverfront shops. The first, Jack’s Fish Market, was a nondescript storefront of glass windows displaying the day’s catch on ice. The plate glass door opened and Kelly walked in. There was a smell, the smell of fresh fish, and a chill from the ice. Rows of flounders and pollock and buckets of scallops stared back at him. Behind the counter, a man clad in almost surgeon’s garb cut at a tuna. A tilefish caught Kelly’s eye.

“Sorry,” said the tilefish.

Kelly looked at it. Its eyes were clear and fresh, but devoid of life. They stared. Unmoving and cold. “What’d you say?”

The fish’s mouth opened and closed. “Sorry, BK.”

“What are you sorry for?” Kelly asked, his eyes darting from the fish to the man behind the counter, the man who continued carving steaks, separate from the conversation behind him.

The fish’s tail flopped sadly up and down. “I sold you a bill of goods, BK. I believed the hype and sold it on to you.”

Kelly’s stomach dropped. “You mean?”

“Yeah. Bait and switch.” The tilefish winked at him and the unnatural horror of that, combined with the awfulness of the joke made Kelly turn and run out the door, down the shell path, the river flowing next to him. A sea gull cried and a siren wailed. Footfalls crunched behind him. Someone was walking up on him.

Stephon Tuitt looked tired, the sweat from the game evaporating in steam clouds from his soaked t-shirt and shorts. The two walked in silence. Tuitt spoke first, “It’s not working, Coach.”

“I disagree, Stephon. We need to make some adjustments, but overall…”

“He’s not working, then, Coach.”

The crush of shells filled the silence. Then, Kelly spoke. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

But Stephon was gone without a word. It was colder now, the sun was setting and it was the sky was filling with cinematic swatches of purples and oranges.

In the room they shared, Paqui felt her husband’s body against her. He was hot, sweating, heaving. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered to herself. “It’s gonna be another long season.”

The post The Irish – Episode Eight – Bait and Switch appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

“Ain’t nothin’ but a fig thing, Baaaaaaby!” Tony Alford grabbed the cup from Diaco’s hand and jammed it into the ice machine. Atop the Guglielmo Athletic Complex, on the small lawn Brian Kelly had installed for the very purpose, the Notre Dame head coach and his assistants grilled steaks and reclined into the over-stuffed blue and gold cushions over the wicker lounge chairs.

Brian Kelly, cigar in his mouth, grilling tongs in one hand and Sam Adams in the other raised the bottle and started speaking. “That was a nice win, gentlemen. To winning.”

“To winning,” the coaches repeated and drank.

“BK?” Chuck Martin asked. “You really think? Did you get a look at The Brick after the game?”

Diaco walked over and threw his arm around Martin. “What’d ya mean ‘you really think?’ That look on Jack’s face had nothing to do with the game and everything to do with that giant nut he owes BK now every year. Salud, BK.”

Again, the men raised their drinks and toasted. Kelly pushed at the edge of the sizzling steaks, turned the corn cobs and the baking potatoes. He wore a smile on his face as he thought about having achieved, in one day, the announcement of his contract extension, an opening day win and his two-hundredth victory as a head coach.

Almost on cue, Jack Swarbrick stepped onto the lawn as he silently exited the private elevator. Noticing the men starting to stand up, he waved them off. “Sit. Sit, boys. Brian, come walk with me, please.”

Kelly rolled his eyes to Tony Alford and handed him the tongs. “Jesus, Jack, you wanna go up in my tree fort extra privacy?”

Swarbrick walked past Kelly and away from the group, his voice, as was becoming his habit, a low semi-whisper.

“Brian, don’t let this contract thing set the wrong impression. We’re more than happy with many of the aspects of yesterday’s performance, but…”

Kelly interrupted him, putting his hand on Swarbrick’s shoulder, smiling wickedly. “But you and I know that if the New Orleans Saints call me, I get to go, is that it?”

Swarbrick recoiled and straightened his mussed collar. “Payton’s going nowhere and you’d never get along with Loomis, Brian.”

Kelly took a swig from his beer. “Again, Jack, what the fuck? Why did you come up here with an ass tighter than someone interviewing to be the head of ResLife? I know you didn’t get 59-9, but we weren’t exactly playing Central Fucking Michigan.”

Swarbrick shot back, hissing now. “And you have no idea the fucking pressure on me, Brian. We’ve got Gameday and all that clap-trap on Saturday, and I’m still dealing with the SEC. Clemson beating Georgia was nice, but it would have been better had TCU beaten LSU and oh! If Rice could have…”

Kelly drank again and laughed. “If Rice had won, Jack, everyone would have said A&M was still pretty much a Big 12 team.”

Swarbrick paused. “Maybe. Maybe. And we got to play a lot of our freshmen yesterday.”

Kelly joined Swarbrick at the lawn’s edge, along the topiary that hid the place from view from campus. “Jack, I know that you’re dealing with shit that I don’t even want to get paid to deal with, but would you relax and enjoy the moment for a second.” Almost on cue, a coed in yoga pants walked between buildings.

“I don’t get paid to live in the moment, Brian. My today was planned three years ago. The only reason we’re having this conversation is because I need things to happen today and Saturday that will impact where we’ll be in three years.”

Kelly glanced behind him, pleased to see Denbrock and Alford who were joking over their food. “Jack, we should have put more points on the board, but Davaris came up lame on a touchdown pass and we couldn’t kick a field goal to save our lives.”

Swarbrick nodded. “Beat Michigan, Brian.”

Kelly patted Swarbrick’s shoulder. “Fuck Michigan, Jack.” He turned and began walking back to his men, singing. “Ain’t nothin’ but a fig thing, Jackyyyy.”

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The post The Irish – Episode Seven – Fig Thang appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Previously, on “The Irish”…

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.

The post “The Irish” – Episode Two – X’s and O’s appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Today, we here at HLS launch a new series, “The Irish,” our homage to the boys in blue and gold and to HBO’s seminal gangland drama, “The Sopranos.” The language and characterizations found in our effort fit the television show, so this is perhaps not something you want to share with your kids. That being said, we felt that to censor ourselves would do an injustice to the material. Plus, you have Father Sorin’s regular posts on Friday morning to cleanse the soul.

We hope you enjoy.

Brian Kelly sticks his left arm out of the rolled-down window of his S.U.V. and snatches the ticket from the age-worn dispensing machine. The time is 10:22 a.m. as he drives onto the I-90 Skyway. The opening bumps of “Crazy Train” thump out of the speakers.

The sanctuary of the drive is all that’s left for this man from Massachusetts who is self-aware enough to spot the similarities he shares with the ticket-dispenser as he considers his reflection in the rearview mirror. “I gotta stop smoking these fucking cigars. Paqui is gonna be on my ass like a corner on Davaris on third and fifteen.” The broken painted line accelerates toward him, his eyes and thoughts now on the far horizon, racing.

He knows he’s going home because everything’s to his left. The Lake, the factories of Gary like heaving props out of Dune, the flailing fight of community after community struggling to make it another day in an existence that makes you think of Springsteen, or Mellencamp, because it’s Indiana.

“Ain’t that America,” the coach thinks to himself. “Fucking America. I gotta recruit the whole goddamn thing. And not just for QB’s. No. Fucking Charlie and Ty. Those motherfuckers got to pick DT’s from Goshen, but I gotta send my guys to fucking Florida and Texas. You think it’s easy to fucking recruit in Florida when you can’t sell a toilet-paper diploma?” Kelly smiles at himself. “Brian. Who the fuck are you talking to?”

After familiar miles, he sees it finally. The Golden Dome. And then, the rest of the buildings. Peeking above and between the trees as he nears. Names of buildings and curves in the campus that to him, just three short years ago, were strange. Manicured. Imposing. Cold. Today, familiar to him as Stanford’s defense. Pulling into his spot at the Gug, with “Crazy Train” weirdly ending just as he slaps the transmission into park, he sees them. His coordinators, Bobby “The Hair” Diaco and Chuck “Chuck” Martin. He embraces each of the men, discomforted by the concern on their faces.

Kelly breaks into a nervous smile. “I feel like the bartender in the fucking joke about the horse. Why the long faces?”

“EG’s done,” Martin holds up an email. Kelly sees the name of his starting QB and the phrase “poor academic judgment” leering out from among a lot of other words. He crumples the paper. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Diaco puts his arm around the coach to steady him as much as to guide him into the building. “Whatchya gonna do? Kid cheats on a paper or whateverthefuck. We gotta move on.”

“Jesus Christ, Bobby.” Kelly stops and bangs his fist against the entry wall. “Can’t I have a fucking minute to get my head around this? You had more time rinsing and repeating with your fucking conditioner this morning that I got to digest this.”

Martin opened the door to Kelly’s office as the men moved towards their usual seats. “We gotta do something, BK. I got a redshirt on Malik and Hendy’s clearly not the guy. I mean, I love the kid to death, but come on. He fucking fell against Air Force. Can’t get that out of my mind.”

Kelly considers the Green Spot whiskey he poured, neat, into the rock crystal glass for himself as Martin talked. “Guys. What’s done is done. We can’t control that. I’d love to have Saban’s situation in times like this. Make a few calls. Professor gets a visit, realizes he made a terrible mistake and must have been referring to another student and baddabing baddaboom EG’s back and in good graces. But I don’t got Saban’s situation. This is Notre Fucking Dame, boys, and we don’t roll like that. Get me Tommy. Now!”

Be sure to catch new episodes of “The Irish” every Sunday on HLS.

The post “The Irish” – Episode One – “Poor Academic Judgment” appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.