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Brian Kelly is entering his seventh season as Notre Dame's head coach. He sports a 55-23 record as Irish head coach, leading them to bowl games in each of his six seasons in South Bend.

(Cory Olsen | MLive.com file)

Notre Dame's football team heads to Culver Military Academy at the end of the coming week to begin preparations for the upcoming season.

The 2016 campaign will mark head coach Brian Kelly's seventh at the helm of the Irish. In January, he agreed to six-year contract extension that would keep him at Notre Dame through 2021.

During an interview on the Jim Rome Show Friday, the Irish's longest-tenured head coach since Knute Rockne was asked if this would be his last coaching stop.

"I think so. I mean, you never say never, but I did it with the express purpose that I wanted to be here at Notre Dame and I wanted this to be where I coached my last game," Kelly told Jim Rome. "Again, from my perspective, you never say never because things change, but my desire was to be here at Notre Dame and to win a national championship.

"To be here six years is," Kelly said with a bit of a chuckle, "longer than I thought I could make it here so hopefully if I can make it another six years. That would be fine with me."

Brian Kelly told me he signed 6-year extension because "I wanted [Notre Dame] to be where I coached my last game" https://t.co/3mKCD3J6tL — Jim Rome (@jimrome) July 29, 2016

During the 10-minute interview, Rome and Kelly covered the follow topics: How the Irish managed to win 10 games last season in spite of a slew of injuries; the quarterback situation with Malik Zaire and DeShone Kizer; the pressure of playing QB at Notre Dame; getting Michigan back on the schedule and what it's like being the head coach of the Irish.

Kelly has a 226-80-2 record as a college head coach, including a 55-23 mark at Notre Dame. He began at Grand Valley State in 1991 and stayed there through 2003, leading the Lakers to back-to-back Division II national titles the final two seasons.

Kelly spent three seasons at Central Michigan (2004-06) and three seasons at Cincinnati (2007-09) before he came to Notre Dame in 2010. Kelly told Rome that you never really know what coaching at Notre Dame would be like until you're into it.

"I had 19 years of head coaching experience and I was not ready for the job in my first year or two," Kelly said. "It requires more than just your head on a swivel. All the experience that I had, you need to call on it when you're at Notre Dame because it can get a bit distracting. I feel very comfortable in the job right now and excited about getting started here this week.

"I think you get easily distracted (as Notre Dame's head coach). There are so many things that are pulling, whether it's the alumni base or the expectations that you have as a representative of the university in so many facets other than football. The No. 1 reason you're here is for the kids, and you can't forget that, and so the job sometimes has a tendency to pull you away from that. Once you realize why you're here, and that is for your players, it makes it a whole lot easier."

The No. 1 storyline entering the Irish's 2016 season focuses on the QB spot. Will it be Malik Zaire or DeShone Kizer in the starting role? Zaire began 2015 as the starter, but he broke his ankle in the second game and was lost for the season. Kizer stepped in and guided Notre Dame through the end of a 10-3 season that featured an appearance in a New Year's Six bowl game.

Kelly said he can see both Zaire and Kizer playing, and that you need two quarterbacks these days in college football.

"Well, you know, both of them are capable of winning - we know that," Kelly said in the Rome interview. "Malik showed that in the way he played against Texas, he's been in the program now for four years, but Kizer obviously has got more experience because of the number of games that he played in big games last year.

"I think what we'll do is let them both compete again through preseason camp, now that Malik has come back fully from the injury and has gotten enough of the playbook down because we really kind of changed the offense as we kind of evolved as an offense under DeShone. Now we'll find out who that starter will be in Game 1."