While the tragic and wholly unacceptable death of a Notre Dame football videographer last week could ultimately cost the university tens of millions of dollars, it apparently will not cost the head coach his job.
Speaking to USA Today‘s Christine Brennan, Irish athletic director Jack Swarbrick said that he will not ask for Brian Kelly‘s resignation in the wake of the death of 20-year-old Declan Sullivan.
Sullivan was filming an Irish football practice last Wednesday from atop a scissor lift that could extend 50 feet in the air and in winds that were gusting in excess of 50 miles per hour. Bad weather the day before had forced the Irish indoors but, for whatever reason, Kelly opted to have practice outdoors the very next day despite a high wind warning blanketing the area.
Roughly 20 minutes after posting “Holy (expletive) holy (expletive) this is terrifying” on Twitter, the lift collapsed due to the high winds and sent Sullivan to his death.
“The fact that Declan died in this tragic accident means we didn’t do all we can,” Swarbrick told USA Today. “There’s no attempt or no interest in moving away from the fact that we should have, we must have, been able to do something to protect Declan. We’ll think about that the rest of our lives.”
Despite the fact that Swarbrick will not seek a resignation from Kelly, it won’t stop the school -- or OSHA -- from asking the tough questions that need to be answered, that Sullivan’s family needs answered, that will hopefully prevent something like this from ever happening again anywhere.
“The process worked one day and didn’t work the next,” Swarbrick said. “I don’t know all the information that went into the Wednesday decision. That’s why we’re doing an investigation. Who knew what about the wind? Who made the decisions? Were the right people engaged?”
The fact that those questions seem to be directed squarely at Kelly leads us to believe that, while the university won’t ask for or force a resignation right now, his future as the Irish head coach is far from guaranteed, and may get even dicier pending the results of the investigations into this senseless death.