Brian Kelly Details Outlook on NIL: "It's About the Most Money I Can Get"

LSU head coach Brian Kelly took the room by storm on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the new landscape of college football recruiting.

Kelly dove into the 2025 Signing Class, but wasted no time in addressing the impact NIL has had on the recruiting trail.

He was transparent in his approach. LSU and other premier programs will need donor support in order to build elite-level rosters to compete for National Championships.

LSU lost a commitment from the No. 1 quarterback in America, Bryce Underwood, in November after the Michigan Wolverines offered a reported NIL package north of $10.5 million.

He wasn't the only commitment the program lost due to financials.

On Tuesday, five-star cornerback Kade Phillips flipped his pledge to the Texas Longhorns, a program that has notoriously proven to be competitive in the NIL space.

It's the new landscape of college football. In order to compete, it's about developing relationships, but the price tag has gone up as well for elite talent.

Kelly was candid about the new age. What were his thoughts?

What He Said: Brian Kelly Discusses New Age of Recruiting

Battling Against the Competitive NIL Programs

“That’s the bar. It’s Oregon, Ohio State, Michigan, Georgia, Alabama, Notre Dame, I could keep naming the teams. Now, it’s no longer about just your brand. Your brand has to be backed up with the ability to supplement that with dollars because that’s what we’re in.

"If you want to get in the portal and close some of these recruitments, you have to have active participation from a donor base and it can’t just be one or two guys. It has to be from all of those that want to see their schools do well. They have to be involved. If LSU wants to be at the top of the food chain, then we have to be involved as well. That’s the reality of where we are today. Whether we like it or not, it’s where we are.”

Receiving Donor Support, It's More Than Relationships With Recruits

“Early on it was educating the donors about what the landscape was in college football and making them understand what a collective was and what recruiting is. We’re going to recruit and put in the time for players that want to graduate and play for championships, but we also have to be able to provide them with the NIL resources in our collective so they actually come here, because other schools are going to offer them too.

"If you want to be in the big poker game, this is what the ante is. That was educational for our group and all across the country. We have donors that still don’t want to give to that and I get it, but we are still in the big poker game. We still need support so we can continue to build our roster.”

The Loss of Bryce Underwood and Kade Phillips

“If you’re a fan, you can look at this glass half full or glass half empty. This is an outstanding class. Would we have wanted all of those guys? Yes, we fought hard for all of those guys, but I think I laid a pretty good message to what this recruiting is all about. Those two guys loved LSU. They didn’t have much of a choice.

"We’re out there fighting to put together a great class and all of these kids wanted to be here and be a part of LSU because they felt this is going to be a championship program. Our fans need to know that.

"What finishes it off is we need to get continued support from our donor base so we can continue to augment the roster through the transfer portal, which is the other way of building your roster in this new world. If we do that, the glass is certainly half full.”

The "New World" of Recruiting

“We have a class that is going to be represented in somewhere near 24, 25. There is still more that we think that is going to be added to this class in terms of freshmen. But many of those were committed prior to their senior year, in-state committed to us – nine out of 10 of them. We did lose a few of them, and it wasn’t because we didn’t recruit those players and offered them the opportunity to develop here holistically in all the areas that I just mentioned.

“But we are in a new world. So we had to pivot, realign and find how we could best continue to build this class.”

More LSU News:

Paul Finebaum: LSU, Brian Kelly in a "Really Bad Spot" Moving Forward

LSU Dishes Out Offer to No. 1 Quarterback in America

Nick Saban Calls LSU Quarterback Garrett Nussmeier a "Sleeper" Ahead of 2024 Season

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