After a gutting loss to USC, Brian Kelly vowed his Notre Dame team wouldn't like him very much this week. He named names for individual accountability. Arduous practices ran long, including one in which he made the Irish repeat every period he found unsatisfactory.

Then, in post-practice comments Thursday, Kelly drove a wedge between the players he recruited and the players he inherited — comments that inspired angry public replies from some players and had more fuming in private, multiple sources close to the team told the Tribune.

"You can see the players that I recruited here," Kelly said Thursday. "You know who they are. We've had one class … that I've had my hand on. The other guys here are coming along. But it's a process. It can't happen overnight. They're getting there. We're making good progress."

Later that night, responses from some players emerged on Twitter accounts. Senior guard Trevor Robinson wrote "You can see the new players. I'm coming along" followed by "You know you (sic) they are" followed by "You can tell the difference between the guys. Night and day."

In response, senior defensive end Kapron Lewis-Moore wrote "awful(,) man.. im sure we talking about the same thing." Junior linebacker Manti Te'o wrote "Playin for my bros and that's it!!!!"

Social media sentiment indeed may be somewhat fleeting — not coincidentally, the tweets were deleted sometime Friday — but multiple sources close to the team confirmed to the Tribune that players were hurt by, disappointed in or angry at Kelly's remarks.

vball10set;949137 wrote:Game Day crew just chastised the hell out of BK...I was a supporter of his hiring, but after watching his sideline antics this season, coupled with this latest "drawing a line" between Weis' players and his own recruits, I'm beginning to think ND may have misfired---again.

WebFire;949128 wrote:Guy reminds me more or Rich Rod every week.

karen lotz;949168 wrote:I've already posted about this.and to answer where I am, I just parked my car to tailgate in South Bend.

september63;949176 wrote:Enjoy the tailgate time bc after Navy there arent many W's left for ND this year.

dwccrew;949261 wrote:More proof that BK is an overrated coach. I was admonished on here before for saying that he is not getting ND playing to their potential this season and here is further proof as to why. He doesn't care about anyone but Brian Kelly.

2kool4skool;949307 wrote:Killing an innocent teenager wasn't enough to get ND fans to turn on him, why do we think this will be?

Fly4Fun;949308 wrote:I didn't think he'd be as bad of a hire as Rich Rod. But honestly, if a school is hiring a guy out of the Big East because he did well there... that's a bad choice. The Big East is the biggest fraud of a conference when it comes to football.

thedynasty1998;949334 wrote:I've been a fan of his in the past and still think he's a good hire. But he has to be smarter than this. He's an in your face coach and demands a lot, but he can't alienate his upperclassmen from his recruits.

sherm03;949336 wrote:I've defended him in the past...but I don't like this one bit.

It's going to be damn near impossible to get Manti to come back for his senior season now.


My biggest complaint is, if you aren't happy with the way "Weis's guys" are playing...THEN DON'T FUCKING PLAY THEM!" Put in "your kids" and run the scheme you want. There will be growing pains because they are young...but at this point what does it matter? I understand that he's trying to fire kids up...but he went about it in the completely wrong way with this, IMO.