Brian Kelly Leans on Unexpected Resource in Coaching Search After LSU Firing

Brian Kelly will turn 65 this fall, owns nearly 300 career wins, and has coached football longer than some athletic directors have been alive. He is also, apparently, a chatbot guy now. Surely, another small sign of an impending apocalypse.

The former LSU and Notre Dame coach told USA Today this week that he spends his days quizzing an artificial intelligence assistant named Claude, hoping the technology can sharpen his pitch for whatever head coaching gig comes next. I hope you're having fun reading this.

It is a fascinating image, well, perhaps, fascinating in a brain-rot sense. Picture it. A grizzled boomer coach, a household name in his industry, spectacled, glasses pushed down to the tip of his nose, grandson's laptop on his dining room table with the big lights on overhead cued up to Claude.AI, index fingers extended for his hunt-and-peck typing method, plugging in prompt after prompt, asking the clankers to help him sound more compelling in front of a hiring committee. I want off this ride.

How Kelly is using AI to land his next job

Kelly has been out of work since LSU fired him in October, ending a tenure that produced a 34-14 record but zero College Football Playoff appearances. The buyout reportedly cost the school $54 million.

Now Kelly is using the downtime to study, and his study partner has a server farm. Shoutout Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and that Palantir CEO with the wacky hair.

"Every day, I'm trying to do my due diligence using Claude and AI, asking questions to build some of those answers that I think can be helpful for me as I get in front of an athletic director," Kelly said earnestly at the dismay of everyone who heard him.

He even has opinions on the chatbots themselves, claiming Claude predicts "outside the lines" while ChatGPT runs straight up the middle. That is real coachspeak applied to large language models, and honestly, it kind of works if you accept nonsense at face value.

The internet, predictably, made a meal of it. OutKick joked that Kelly needs AI to pick out his tie. Social media spent a day workshopping prompts he might be entering at 2 a.m.

What the AI angle means for Kelly's future

Beneath the memes lies a real question: whether any college football program will hire him again. A 2026 landing spot appears off the table, and a hire ahead of the 2027 season would be a best-case scenario.

The recent track record for fired SEC coaches is not encouraging. Jimbo Fisher has not coached since Texas A&M let him go in 2023. Ed Orgeron, the man Kelly replaced in Baton Rouge, has stayed off the sidelines. Zach Arnett, Bryan Harsin, Sam Pittman, Hugh Freeze, Mark Stoops, Jeremy Pruitt, Billy Napier and the list goes on, with some finding new head coach opportunities and some not.

Former LSU Tigers head coach Brian Kelly is asking AI to help him with his interviews. | Petre Thomas-Imagn Images

Kelly is doing TV work for CBS Sports Network, which usually signals a coach getting comfortable in the broadcast booth rather than itching back to the practice field. His own words suggest otherwise.

"You're going to have to utilize those tools," Kelly said of AI's role in coaching. "It's not taking over the game, I think it's enhancing it."

A cursory search didn't reveal a LinkedIn profile for Kelly, which seems like a big oversight. Hey, somebody out there, if you're in Kelly's orbit, let him know in the group chat that he should get on that.

Jokes aside, whether any athletic director shares Kelly's vision for a college football program is the actual interview question that will need an answer. Perhaps he should stick to what he knows, since he has had plenty of success, and leave the LLMs out of it. College football coaches born before the Cuban Missile Crisis shouldn't need AI help for job interviews.

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