TheNuze.com

South Bend, IN - In a week that has already seen the Pope himself tackled by some lady in church, Catholic football was dealt yet another blow.  Just days after signing his lucrative contract, Notre Dame's newly acquired head football coach Brian Kelly stunned university officials and fans everywhere when, during a large "Meet Coach Kelly" assembly, he laughingly revealed that he's not Irish or even Catholic.  "I come from a family of Finnish Lutherans - our name was originally spelled Kieli", said Coach Kelly at a subsequent interview still seemingly amused with himself.  The coach continued, "This didn't start out as a grand deception.  People have always tended to assume I'm Catholic because of my name and years ago when I was still coaching high school ball, I decided to just let them think that I was - there's no down-side to it and I figured it might give me a leg up if I ever applied at a parochial school.  At the time, I couldn't have dreamed where my little ruse might eventually take me.  I want to state for the record that I did not explicitly lie to anyone at Notre Dame; they were more than happy to simply believe what they wanted to believe.  The real trick was going incognito to my Lutheran church in Cincinnati for last four years because, fellow parishioners or not, they would have spilled the beans in a heartbeat in order to keep me coaching at Cincinnati."  In a related story, a visibly unburdened Lou Holtz decided to admit that, for the last 43 years, he has really been a practicing Buddhist.