Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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option team, and we're going to go pro style and the pieces of position profiles just don't fit … you talk about a transi- tion that's nearly impossible. But to go through something like that and a group of kids and the coaches … I'm telling you this group stuck together." VanGorder has coached from the sidelines every season of his career with the exception of when he served as the Falcons' linebackers coach in 2007. He indicated that he and Kelly have not dis- cussed whether VanGorder will coach from the field or from the booth at Notre Dame. "I don't know [how that started]," VanGorder said. "That's just what I did from the beginning. … When I was a younger coach, I was the more maybe emotional coach and a little bit more outspoken and such and felt like, as the leader of a group, that I needed to be there with them." For a native of Jackson, Mich., who grew up watching coaching legends Ara Parseghian and Bo Schembechler, it feels right to come back to the Midwest and coach at Notre Dame. "The one thing I really look forward to are the already established standards and expectations here of Notre Dame and the football program, and certainly the enthusiasm that [Kelly] has brought to Notre Dame and that I'm going to be a part of," VanGorder said. "So I re- ally look forward to that culture, and for many years I've thought, as I ad- mired Brian as he continually advanced, that maybe some day we'd get back to- gether." "We had such a great time the first time around at Grand Valley, and I hope that we can do the same thing, and I'm sure we will here at Notre Dame." ✦