The origin of Brian Kelly’s botched joke was John McKay, inaugural coach of the expansion Tampa Bay Bucaneers, who was asked after a game about his team’s execution (of play) and said he’d be in favor of it. He didn’t want to kill his players, and 40 years ago, everyone got that.

Brian Kelly is on the verge of being Notre Dame’s winningest coach in history (ever hear of Knute Rockne?) and he doesn’t mean it either.

But we live in stupid and/or humorless times.

(How bad were McKay’s Bucs? At least a couple of times that I remember, other teams’ head coaches got canned for losing to Tampa)

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