Philadelphia Eagles coaching rumors: Notre Dame's Brian Kelly interviewed this week

ESPN is reporting that the Eagles have interviewed Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly and that there is "mutual interest" between the two sides. It has been confirmed that the meeting took place Tuesday, just one day after the BCS championship game.

Kelly is certainly a fantastic college coach and has been one since 1991. That's a pretty astounding 21 years of experience. He's coached at Grand Valley State, Central Michigan, Cincinatti & most recently Notre Dame compiling a record of 199-67-2 over that time. He's also gained a reputation in recent seasons as a turnaround artist.

As coach of Cincinatti, he went 34-6 over 4 years, led them to their first outright Big East title and was named national coach of the year.

Related: The Assumption Way: How Brian Kelly learned to win

Since taking over at Notre Dame 3 years ago, Kelly has gone 28-11, won another national coach of the year award and resurrected the team back into a title contender. They were ranked #1 and went undefeated this season before running into Alabama in the BCS title game. As we all know, they were completely destroyed in that game.

Should Kelly make the jump to the NFL, it would be a much more level playing field.

It's really hard to cast Kelly as either a defensive or offensive guy because he's been a head coach for virtually all of his career. He did spend a couple seasons after graduating college on the defensive side of the ball for Division II Grand Valley.

He's an interesting choice and certainly one with a very long track record of success albeit in the college ranks. It's also notable that the Eagles are still dipping into the college ranks to look for coaches.

While Kelly has expressed an openness to the NFL in the past, there are question as to whether he'll want to leave a pretty cushy gig in South Bend. That said, Kelly left for a vacation after the interview and agreed to revisit talks with the Eagles this weekend.