Before Brian Kelly restored the luster to Notre Dame, he coached the Lakers. These were not the Los Angeles Lakers; more like the complete opposite. These were the Grand Valley State Lakers, a Division II football team in Allendale, Mich.

This was not a brief stopover for Kelly, a steppingstone on the usual itinerant career path, a place to spend a year or two and beef up the old résumé while keeping one eye cocked toward somewhere better. Kelly built the foundation of his career at Grand Valley.

There, he became a coach.

He arrived in 1987 as a graduate assistant, a bachelor and glorified gofer who pocketed $4,000 annually the first two years and $12,000 after that. He left for Central Michigan after the 2003 season with 118 victories and 2 national championships, with a family and a system he believed in, a system he knew would work at the highest level. Even at Notre Dame.

At Grand Valley, Kelly met and married his wife, Paqui. They used to run together at lunchtime (she set the pace). They had three children there. He became a defensive coordinator and a head coach, both for the first time. He learned how to recruit, adapt, ignore those who clamored for his job. He also learned a special class of players could transform a program, long before it happened again this season at Notre Dame.