Brian Kelly’s decision to leave Notre Dame for LSU tells you every you need to know about Kelly and the chaotic state of college football.
Notre Dame is ranked fifth in the college football playoff rankings. The Irish are 11-1 after completion of the regular season. If Alabama loses to Georgia in the SEC title game or Cincinnati, Michigan or Oklahoma State lose in their conference championship games, there is a good chance Notre Dame would be back in the national semi-finals.
But Kelly couldn’t hang in there with his team, waiting for the outcome.
Instead, he abandoned his team with time still left on the clock, opting to fill the head coaching vacancy at LSU for a 10-year deal worth $95 million dollars. Money talks.
Kelly, 60, became the winningest coach in Notre Dame history earlier this season, surpassing Knute Rockne. Kelly is 113-40 since 2010 (including 21 victories from in the 2012 and 2013 seasons that were vacated by the NCAA) leading the Irish to a BCS title game in 2012 and two CFP appearances in 2918 and 2020. To his credit, he created stability in a program that has gone through three coaches since 1988 national championship coach Lou Holtz left in 1996.d
Kelly was on the road recruiting when the news broke Monday night. He sent a text to his players apologizing that they found out through social media or new reports.
But the news rocked South Bend.
No other Notre Dame coach had left for another job since 1933 when Hunk Anderson, Rockne’s successor, left for North Carolina.
LSU apparently had approached Kelly earlier this fall, but Kelly didn’t not act like a man ready to move on as late as last week. The coaching carousel has been wild this year. But when asked about the possibility of him leaving for another job, he was firm in his denial. “No, I mean Steelers coach Mike Tomlin had the best line, right? Unless that fairy god mother comes by with that $250 million, my wife would want me to take a look at it first, I’d have to run it by her.’’
So much for truth in advertising.
Kelly obviously felt it was easier to win a national title at LSU, where the school wants to compete with Alabama in the bells and whistles department and can recruit from a much larger talent base in the deep south because the program is less constrained by academics.
Kelly is all in at LSU, where his twitter account has been changed to include, “Geaux Tigers.’’
Notre Dame was caught flat footed and now must scramble to find a new head coach. One thing is for certain, Kelly will not coach the team in post season playoff if the Irish get there. To bother a phrase from Michigan AD Bo Schembechler in 1989 when Bill Frieder left for Arizona State just before the start of the NCAA tournament, a Notre Dame man will coach Notre Dame.
The Irish still are an elite program and should be able to find someone suitable to do the job. Luke Fickell, the talented, principled and effective coach at unbeaten, fourth ranked Cincinnati seems like an obvious choice, but his team is on the verge of becoming the first group of five team to make the national playoff and it is hard to seeing him leaving his players until the end of the season. Notre Dame defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman would also be a good choice although Notre Dame he has never been a head coach and Notre Dame, as we found out when Bob Davie replaced Lou Holtz, never been a learn on the job position.
Maybe the Tigers, who have won three championships in this decade, are getting a savior. Maybe they are getting a later day version of Ed Orgeron, who won a national championship in 2019 only to be fired two years later when he didn’t live up to expectations, even though he beat Texas A & M last week to become bowl eligible in the SEC, which is the toughest league in the country.
Kelly is on top of the world today. But he might discover LSU fans can be impatient if he doesn’t win immediately.
