Brian Kelly Tweets About Notre Dame Interview, ESPN Takes Notice

Twitter has really arrived now. First, Cincinnati head football coach Brian Kelly used it to confirm an upcoming interview with Notre Dame about potentially becoming their next coach. Then, most news outlets didn’t even really think it was that big of a deal that he broke the news that way. An AP writeup matter-of-factly says:

Kelly met with his players on Monday afternoon, and confirmed his interest in the Notre Dame job on his Twitter feed.

“Just informed our team that Notre Dame has contacted me and I will listen to what they have to say,” he tweeted.

A New York Times article was more concerned with the effect  that statement had on Kelly’s page:

A Cincinnati spokesman said that the Bearcats were negotiating a new contract with Kelly. But Kelly has not hid his interest in Notre Dame. On Monday he wrote on Twitter: “Just informed our team that Notre Dame has contacted me and I will listen to what they have to say.” (His Twitter followers jumped to near 3,500 from around 1,800 in about four hours.)

One reporter, however, seemed to take  particular interest in the Kelly saga: ESPN blogger Brian Bennett. Kelly refused to discuss his job situation in the week leading up to, or directly after, Cincinnati’s 45-44 win over Pittsburgh,  which clinched the team’s second consecutive Big East championship and wrapped up an undefeated regular season. Shortly after this, Kelly appeared on the radio show of Sports Illustrated’s Dan Patrick and discussed – you guessed it – his job situation. That didn’t appear to sit so well with Bennett, who began this post with:

Brian Kelly isn’t going to talk about job speculation. Except, you know, when he feels like it.

In another post after Kelly’s Notre Dame tweet, Bennett appeared to again show annoyance with Kelly:

Brian Kelly doesn’t have to worry about the media spreading “misinformation,” as he lectured to us after Saturday’s win over Pitt. Kelly is announcing himself that he’s interviewing with Notre Dame.

Bennett went on to discuss the significance of Kelly’s announcement arriving via Twitter (which, as seen above, few others did):

This is fascinating to me outside of the job stuff. Coaches using Twitter to break their own news has become a recent trend, but a lot of the tweets are still very generic stuff. For a coach to announce that way that he’s talking to another school is pretty amazing.

Interestingly, Kelly also tweeted earlier today that he will not be interviewing at any point today, contrary to expectations. He also posted this picture (an ad for Accenture) that is bizarre on several levels, from the hoopla surrounding Tiger Woods to the (unintentional?) comment on Kelly’s in-limbo job status.

Bennett is correct in that Kelly’s recent tweets represent a new level of social media information-sharing by coaches. USC’s Pete Carroll has used Twitter to his advantage for some time now, and the media levelheadedness in the wake of Kelly’s tweet signifies that Twitter’s mainstream acceptance is only growing. The college coaching Twitter world, however, will remain incomplete unless Texas Tech’s Mike Leach has a change of heart and joins up. Watch him in this and this, and you’ll need more Leach in your life, too.