About a year after an internal academic review left four Notre Dame football ineligible to play, some are still trying to get back to play for the Irish this season.

KeiVarae Russell, a cornerback who sat out Notre Dame's season last year for academic reasons, has been practicing with the football team this spring and summer, ESPN reported. Notre Dame head football coach Brian Kelly was even confident the NCAA will clear defensive back to play ahead of the regular season.

"The information I've gotten back from [athletic director] Jack Swarbrick and our athletic administration is that we've submitted everything. We feel confident in the information that we've submitted to the NCAA, and we feel very strong about [Russell's] eligibility," Kelly said in a press conference Thursday a day before opening his team's preseason camp, according to ESPN. "We certainly were guided through this process in terms of what he needed to do. He went out and did that. But it's now out of our hands. We feel strongly about checking the box and doing the things that we were required to do along the way."

While Russell is set to take part in the Irish's official training camp, another player dismissed for academic fraud, Ishaq Williams, will not be.

"That process is ongoing, so I don't have anything specific to report other than I know that that process is still ongoing and he will not practice until we get further information," Kelly said of Williams. "And there's two that are out there: It's KeiVarae and Ishaq. They're separate and different and distinctly different places. KeiVarae will practice, Ishaq will not because the cases are different, and both of them are going through the process right now."

(Source: ESPN)