Since coming to town Brian Kelly has embraced the Notre Dame tradition like no coach since Lou Holtz.

Some day I believe, like Holtz, Kelly may have a statue errected on campus-- he may be that good.

He has already instilled in his team the need for the awareness of the traditions and their role in ensuring they continue. At yesterday's opening day of practice he was his usual eloquent self on the topic.

"One of the areas that I was a bit surprised that we lacked as a team was an understanding of who we were and who we want to be,'' Kelly said. ''So the idea of the Fighting Irish, the idea of playing hard for four quarters, the idea of playing anywhere against anyone at any time, has been a constant conversation, quite frankly, with our football team.

''I believe [the past] to be a benefit. And if I believe it to be a benefit of who we are, we'd better talk about it every day.''

''That is the pervasive theme here: Let's get back to understanding the great tradition of who we are, how we play the game,'' he said. ''We won't go as far as no facemasks.''

''The head football coach at Notre Dame is not just the football coach,'' he said. ''He's an ambassador for the university. I think I knew that coming in, but that's also my personality. I want to be involved in the community. I want to make sure that we reach out to our alums that go from the East Coast to the West Coast.''

Kelly has already started off pushing all the right buttons.

If he starts winning football games we have a legend in the making