They decided a couple of seasons ago, back when they both had a real chance to be Carolina?s pre-Cam Newton answer at quarterback, that they?d find a knothole in their schedule and take in a game at Notre Dame Stadium.
If it indeed happens this season, sometime after Saturday?s season-opener a continent away, Clausen would get his best glimpse at the man he could have played his senior season for, had the QB not decided to wade into the NFL Draft pool a year early.
Notre Dame head football coach Brian Kelly.
And Pike will see the man whose faith in him, whose tireless prodding, whose micromanagement of the quarterback position transformed the former University of Cincinnati QB from a high school prospect who didn?t even merit a one-star recruiting rating to a man who almost nudged the Bearcats into the 2009 national title game.
Pike won?t see the relative stranger that stalked the Irish sidelines in 2010 and ?11.
That?s by Kelly?s admission, though, much more than Pike?s.
Kelly steps into a defining third season at ND with a Bob Davie-esque 16-10 record and a pledge not to reinvent himself but to reach back into his past, to bring the best of who he used to be. And find the part of him that got lost in the step up into college football?s most glaring spotlight.
?Certainly finishing the way we finished, I think any coach, whether they come to the same conclusion I did or not, you're always going to take a step back and look, all right, what can we do better,? Kelly said referring to the 0-2 whimper at the end of last year?s 8-5 season.
?There was nothing wrong with our schemes. There was nothing wrong with what we were teaching them. What was wrong was we weren't winning games that I thought we should win, and so sometimes you've got to look at yourself.
?So I think the bottom line for me is that I wanted to be more involved in that process of making sure that I could help our players win, and that means you've got to push the distractions away and focus on why you're here, and that is I want to coach my guys.?
Just like he did at Cincinnati, at Central Michigan, at Grand Valley State when his star was rising.
?I think coach Kelly and I had a great relationship, and a lot of that is because he was so hands on,? said Pike, temporarily out of football as he rehabs from a second elbow surgery. ?I?ve been around coaches my whole life, where the head coach just kind of watches practice and head coaches spend more time on defense.
?But coach Kelly was at it every day on offense and he became almost a second personal quarterback coach, where he?d stop into meetings and handle that stuff as well.
?That?s where you saw how great coach Kelly could be as a coach, just his football mind in general is amazing, what he can pass down and what he picks up on in meetings.?
The journey starts in Aviva Stadium, in a city ? Dublin, Ireland ? that has a much better grip on the next non-soccer/rugby headliner to grace the facility, Lady Gaga on Sept. 15, than the perceived sideshow Navy and ND are about to put on.
But in some ways, it?s fitting, or at least poetic, that the back-to-his-roots movement starts in a country where Kelly?s great grandfather spent his whole life.
?He?s always been that out-of-the-box thinker,? new offensive coordinator Chuck Martin said of Kelly. ?He?s never been the one who couldn?t admit, ?Hey we need to do this better.? He?s never been the guy who says, ?We?re going to keep pounding the square peg in the round hole, because my record says that that?s the way it works.?
?There were going to be changes. How ever it played out, there were going to be changes. He?s got his puzzle pieces where he wants them now so that everything can push in the right direction.?
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