LSU Set to Hire Brian Kelly as Next Head Football Coach
LSU's highly anticipated coaching search has come to an end. The Tigers have set their sights on Notre Dame's Brian Kelly to become the next football coach of the program according to Yahoo Sports Pete Thamel, later confirmed by Sports Illustrated's Ross Dellenger.
Scott Woodward has been known to go "big game hunting" throughout his career as an administrator and Kelly fits the resume in terms of purely on the field results. He's been to the College Football Playoff twice and lost both games as Notre Dame's coach but is 6-5 in bowl games over his career.
Kelly has struggled in postseason games with the Irish, which is obviously a huge priority for LSU year in and year out.
Kelly is the winningest active coach in college football, having spent the last 12 seasons in South Bend and having a 263-96 record over his entire career. The longtime coach of the Irish was part of an early list of candidates the Tigers reached out to but didn't get much in terms of a positive response.
But it appears Woodward was persistent and was able to pull off another big move for the program. Over his last five seasons with the Irish, they have been consistent regular season winners:
2017: 10-3
2018: 12-1
2019: 11-2
2020: 10-2
2021: 11-1
According to Brody Miller of The Athletic, the deal Kelly and LSU have agreed to is 10 years for $100 mil
It's been a stressful 48 hours since the 2021 team closed out its regular season and Ed Orgeron set off to Destin upon beating Texas A&M 27-24. Many in LSU circles were hopeful to see Oklahoma's Lincoln Riley come to fruition the Sunday following the Tigers regular season finale but took a punch to the gut when Riley elected to move out West and take the USC job.
A move that had been gaining traction throughout the day is now on the verge of being complete with the Tigers set to make an official announcement as soon as tomorrow according to Thamel.
There hadn't been a lot of concrete details to surface but on Monday word started to trickle down that the program was making an "aggressive push" for Notre Dame's Brian Kelly, according to Brody Miller of The Athletic. The question now become what will happen with the Irish as they are still very much in the hunt for a College Football Playoff berth.
Now it appears Woodward has his guy and the program can now move on to the next stage of roster and staff construction. When asked about leaving Notre Dame a week ago, here was Kelly's response.
"Unless that fairy godmother comes by with that $250 million check, my wife would want to take a look at it first. I’d have to run it by her," Kelly said.
Woodward must've checked and the fairy godmother is good with what was offered
Story will be updated as more details are provided.
