Tuesday Livechat: Looking at Notre Dame, Brian Kelly and Declan Sullivan Situation

During this past football season the college game was awash in controversy and while we all looked at the Cam Newton, UNC, USC, AJ Green and other scandals with a careful eye an awful accident occurred in South Bend. We've all read about the event, wind gusts toppled the perch of video assistant Declan Sullivan and the young man fell to his death. We've all universally agreed that it was horrible not only for his family but for Notre Dame and college football as a whole.

When it happened Jason Whitlock was the first and most vocal to call for coach Brian Kelly's head just days after the incident. Bomani Jones, friend of the program was in line with that statement given Kelly's ultimate responsibility for sending the kid up into the elements.


For the sake of transparency I'll first admit I was on the fence. I thought if they fired Kelly it could be justified but I also thought this was genuinely an accident, something that none of us had seen or really even imagined happening. That sentiment was largely due to my own experiences of being out at practice in wind, in rain and the like and seeing our guys up there in their ponchos and parkas taping our practices. Everyday I knew that when I went into the locker room our film guys would be up in the video room loading the tape for us to watch tomorrow at the latest but usually that same night.

That said, at UNC we have a stationary film tower built and we also use the roof of the law school to film. We utilize the cherry picker aparatus when we take it into the indoor facility.

As our buddy Adam Jacobi wrote after speaking with a college football video assistant, the culture of those guys doesn't exactly "allow" for them to say no. With that in mind the onus is on the coach and the video directors to maintain the safety of those kids.

Watching this situation play out, first with Notre Dame banning the use of hydraulic lifts, then with the $77,500 fine levied by the Indiana OSHA office due to their violations and lastly with the most recent revelation that the film submitted to IOSHA was edited.

First and foremost the banning of hydraulic lifts is, to put it bluntly, stupid. Unless they're building a stationary stand alone tower this move does nothing to address the actual problem. The lift wasn't the issue, used properly they benefit many a college football team. A move to "address" the issue without ever actually taking a step to correct it. The decision making process was flawed, not the equipment. This is akin to taking away lawn mowers because someone decided to mow a steep hill in flip flops and cut their foot off. Fix the decision making, put a policy in place for the safety of their videographers and keep using the lifts within the manufacturer's guidelines.

Now, regarding the 'edited' film and IOSHA. At first blush Brian Kelly doing this has got to be grounds for firing. Hiding film with the piss poor excuse of protecting "trade secret information related to the business of college sports" is absolutely unacceptable during this dealing with a state agency set up to investigate workplace safety, not steal your plays or signs in a Belichick-ian spygate type scenario.

However, given the way this scenario has played out my eye goes from Kelly to the institution as a whole. Surely if a coach had orchestrated this cover up on his own and the administration caught wind of this he would have a lot of explaining to do. Instead what we're seeing is Notre Dame look to push past it and on into the 2011 season, very little commenting on the situation and the goal of just getting to next year.

As this situation progresses we'll see how the complexion changes given the Irish have tried to pull the wool over our eyes with the editing of film. When this was just an accident I think we were all on the side of just finding out what happened and making sure it didn't happen again at Notre Dame or any other campus around the nation. Now it seems there is a lot more to be discussed than just hydraulic lift policies at universities.

So folks, the livechat, as always, goes at 10pm Eastern and we'll hit this situation from several angles. Set your email reminders and check the twitter for updates.



That's 10pm eastern folks and if you can't make the livechat be sure to get your thoughts in via twitter and we'll make sure they get addressed.