Brian Kelly Opens Up on Decision to Leave Notre Dame for LSU, Prepared for Challenges in SEC
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When LSU head coach Brian Kelly made the decision to leave Notre Dame and take his talents to Death Valley, it sent college football fans into a frenzy. Walking away from a program he seemingly built into a consistent College Football Playoff contender to a rebuilding LSU Tigers, some questioned Kelly’s decision to come to the SEC.
Kelly went to Baton Rouge with something to prove. His desire to show critics he can hang with the top dogs in college football and get the Tigers back to the LSU standard of football, his organization and discipline have been major takeaways over the course of his first few months.
Leading Notre Dame to the 2012 BCS National Championship Game while also punching their tickets to the College Football Playoff in both 2018 and 2020, the Fighting Irish just couldn’t get over the hump and take one home, but Kelly feels things could be different at LSU given the tremendous resources he’ll have at his disposal.
Kelly joined the Varsity House Podcast where he harped on his decision to leave the Fighting Irish and his ultimate goal in Death Valley, detailing the recruiting differences between Notre Dame and LSU.
“Well, if you look at … at Notre Dame, we were right there,” Kelly said. “What were some of those differences? Maybe a little more skill on the perimeter, maybe a little bit more in those areas that were hard to get to Notre Dame — maybe a D-lineman here or there, maybe a receiver here or there, a running back here or there. It was just a slight difference.”
“And I think that’s how close it is at Notre Dame, and so we’re not talking about big leaps here… We’ve seen the kind of players that you can get immediately here just in the state of Louisiana that are much more difficult to get year-in and year-out at Notre Dame because you’ve gotta go from coast to coast. You’ve gotta go from Los Angeles to Cleveland to find those guys.”
For Kelly to add a national championship to his resume would be the icing on the cake to his illustrious career. A winner in every facet of the game, to bring the Tigers back to title contenders and get over the hump would solidify him as one of the greats.
But the challenge in the SEC is much greater than that at Notre Dame. A strenuous schedule paired with difficult recruiting battles, it’s a whole new ball game in Baton Rouge. Kelly is ready for the highs and lows. Though there is one thing Kelly wants to check off the bucket list in the SEC: defeat Nick Saban.
“I want to beat Nick Saban,” Kelly said. “Who doesn’t want to beat Nick Saban, you know what I mean? I want to play him in the regular season. I mean, that’s the standard, right? Now, he’s a conference opponent.”
With so many resources in Baton Rouge, the decision to leave South Bend may not have been as difficult as people think. Kelly detailed the thought he put into the process, ultimately looking at the bigger picture and what LSU could offer him long term.
“Oh, it was quick,” Kelly said. “You know, a lot of these timelines, head coaches never have the ability to say, ‘Alright, I’m doing this, I’m doing that.’ It’s the school that’s kinda telling you, ‘Hey, you got a short window here or we’re gonna go with the other guy. …There was no rush, but there was a rush because all the coaches were being taken. So the timeline was, ‘OK, if we don’t get Kelly, we can’t be left with our second candidate or our third candidate.’ So that’s really the timeline.”
Kelly’s first offseason at the helm of LSU football has been extraordinary. Adding a myriad of fresh faces to the roster while instilling disciplinary habits in his players, this new era of Tiger football has the chance to be special with so much organization and accountability from the top down.
