SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The first play in the first practice of the Brian Kelly era had not yet been completed when the new Notre Dame coach and his assistants began yelling for players to hurry up and line up for the next one.

"On me! On me! Finish on me!" Kelly yelled as he stood in the end zone, urging the players to gather around him as they finished their first set of plays and the assistants ran back toward the next set of players to get them going.

The Irish worked at a frenetic pace Friday as spring practice got under way. Kelly, hired after building Cincinnati into a powerhouse behind a lightning-strike offense, clearly wants to pick up the pace at Notre Dame.

Under Charlie Weis, practices began with a drawn-out stretching period. Kelly began practice with an eight-minute special teams segment. Then they began stretching, but at an up-tempo pace. Even the direction of the warmup runs were different, going east-west instead of north-south.

Then they began running plays. When they final group finished those drills, Kelly declared: "Way too slow! We are nine plays behind! Pick it up tomorrow!"

Afterward, wide receiver Michael Floyd called the pace "overwhelming," then corrected himself.

"Just something different to me personally," he said.

Quarterback Dayne Crist said the tempo was challenging.

"Learning on the run is a big deal here," he said. "Guys will learn to get used to it over time. The speed is the biggest difference."

Kelly led Cincinnati to a 12-0 regular-season finish before taking the job at Notre Dame, which fired Weis after the Irish went 6-6 in the regular season for a second straight year. Notre Dame last won a national title in 1988.