There’s no denying what Brian Kelly has done in his first season at Cincinnati. Off and on the field, the Bearcats are clearly a more popular and more prolific team. Yet the ease in which Kelly has handled the task is most admirable, from his start when he inherited the team as it prepared for a bowl game to the mysterious fires he put out when the team went form 6-0 to 6-2 to the emphatic emergence late in the season.

It looks as if it comes to him very easily … and there seems to be an equally easy explanation. Brian Kelly is a trained politician trained to coach football. He doesn’t run for office. He runs a program. His father was an alderman in Chelsea, Mass., and Kelly himself later worked on Gary Hart’s presidential campaign.

Who knew that training in politics would also be perfect for a career in coaching? But Brian Kelly’s engaging personality, political skill and public speaking ability make him an ideal modern coach. In his first full season at Cincinnati, he is as comfortable giving orders on the sideline as he is mingling with alumni donors or sitting in a recruit’s living room.

“It’s the reaching out,” Kelly said of the similarities between politicians and head coaches. “You have to go door to door to get votes. It’s the same thing taking ownership of a program.”