Brian Kelly has spent the last few weeks of media appearances echoing the same message: If Notre Dame, or any football team, cannot start conditioning work back on campus by early July, starting the season as scheduled becomes impractical and unsafe. If health officials and state governments do not give approval by then, though, he still maintains a balmy outlook about how contingency plans and altered seasons would play out. In fact, he sees a month delay as having little to no effect on the schedule. “[Athletics director] Jack Swarbrick and I have discussed some different models, and we could start as late as October and still get our 12-game schedule in without bye weeks and moving into December because we don’t play a conference championship,” Kelly said Thursday on Mike Tirico’s “Lunch Talk’ on NBC Sports Network.

Kelly says a month delay of college football won't hinder Notre Dame’s schedule. (Mike Miller)

“Without altering the schedule, if you look at it as it comes up on the screen, if we started with Wisconsin on Oct. 3, went straight through the schedule and took the other games and didn’t have the bye weeks, then went two weeks later into December, we could get our 12 games in.” With every mention about a moved back or altered season, Kelly followed it with a disclaimer: There is time to reach the necessary standards before any decisions are made. Notre Dame has announced that it will not rule on the fate of the second half of summer school until May 15. The school said the first three weeks — June 15 through July 6 — will remain online and campus will be closed. That decision and others made by university officials will directly affect football and its ability to reconvene around Kelly’s ideal timeline. There will be no special treatment. Kelly has no plans to go rouge from a decision handed down by university president Father John Jenkins, public heath officials or politicians and hold practices anyway.

“It would be hypocritical if it’s just about football,” Kelly said. “We want to play. It’s part of our DNA. But it has to be one where we’re gradually bringing everything back together as one. How do we open up the dorms? How do we get people employed and back on campus? Cleaning and all the front-line service people have to be safe as well. There’s a lot here in front of us.” The primary steps that need to happen, in Kelly’s view, are widespread testing, relaxed social distancing orders and some kind of updated national plan that brings normalcy back or closer to being fully back. If those aren’t doable by July 1, then implementing the backup plans for the season will become imminent. Normalcy means large gatherings and crowds would be cleared in time for football season. If they’re not, then Kelly says games shouldn’t go on without them. Swarbrick offered a similar assessment Monday.