SOUTH BEND -- Friday's news that Notre Dame wide receiver Michael Floyd will not be suspended from the University for his March 20th drunk driving arrest cleared the path for him to return to the field.
However, Irish coach Brian Kelly said today that for now, Floyd remains suspended from the team.
And he's still got a way to go on that path before being reinstated.
"This is not about football," Kelly said. "Everybody has jumped to the conclusion that Mike Floyd is going to play football. Mike has so many things on his plate that he has to deal with before he can even think about football.... A lot of hurdles that he's going to have to go through before we even start thinking about football."
Those hurdles include not only letting the legal system run its course, but also a University-established plan that Floyd must follow.
"That he wants to follow," Kelly said. "He's the one that's said, 'Listen, I need to do these things, to be right.' And so he's followed through with those. But it's only three weeks (since the arrest)."
If he follows that plan, clears the hurdles, then what? Could he return to the team? Kelly said he has no timetable or deadline for Floyd's potential return, and he's a long way from announcing what Floyd's punishment could be.
"I haven't reached any kind of thought process as far as, 'Well, that's (worth) a game or two games or three games, or geez, what he did requires a five-game suspension.' I haven't even ventured into that yet. It's too early. We're three weeks post of a very, very serious event that occurred. And it wasn't a small event, this was serious.
