The Brian Kelly hire at LSU was a disaster.
It was never going to work, and the results spoke for themselves. The zenith of which happened Saturday night, when the only reason “Fire Kelly” chants weren’t
totally pervasive was because so many LSU fans vacated the stadium over the course of the second half ass whipping at the hands of Texas A&M and LSU’s former Strength & Conditioning coach – who Kelly literally fired in the rain – that A&M fans were able to infiltrate the student section and mock LSU.
It was the final humiliation of the Kelly era, the event horizon of a proud program realizing how far exactly they had fallen. But I won’t dwell on specific mistakes, of which there were many. I want to instead zoom out and focus on the biggest cardinal sins of the Kelly Era:
1 – LSU football was not LSU football.
Not only were Brian Kelly’s teams at LSU devoid of any real personality or identity, but they were at times outright antithetical to what makes LSU football LSU football. The core identity of LSU isn’t necessarily a smashmouth defense that makes you quit – the Orgeron era was decidedly more offense-focused than anything else – but LSU football over the past two decades is fearless because of a supreme confidence. Maybe the manner in which that fearlessness and confidence manifested changed, but it was there.
I never felt like a Brian Kelly football team was confident or fearless. Not once. At their absolute best, they were a team that, if they maximized their performance, could potentially win games barring any extraordinary circumstances. That was it, that was the ceiling. Never once was there a killer instinct against top teams that should be LSU’s acolytes. There were few examples of a 2012 South Carolina-type game, where when the rubber meets the road, the team simply willed a victory. It was always hoping for the best and never welcoming a dogfight.
And lord help them if the game wasn’t being played within the once-friendly confines of Tiger Stadium on a Saturday Night. On the road, Kelly and his teams just didn’t realize that they were LSU. Which leads us to the next point.
2 – It was boring.
Here’s the secret: LSU football can lose games. LSU football can even be bad. But under no circumstances can LSU football be boring.
We went into each game knowing exactly how the game script was going to go. Sure there were exceptions – Bama in ‘22, Ole Miss in ‘25 (both with the buff of Tiger Stadium at night) – but overall, there was little excitement to these games and with these teams. Even Jayden Daniels going supernova with Malik Nabers and Brian Thomas Jr. was somewhat overshadowed by the shortcomings of the defense.
LSU was never a serious playoff candidate -even in the era of an expanded playoff – beyond September and was left to play out the string in November and “build” towards next year, which would ultimately never come.
Frustrations with special teams turned into frustrations with the defense, which turned into frustrations with the offense before a quick callback to special teams Saturday night. That lack of identity just left LSU as another generic, underperforming college football team, which means we would have been entirely forgettable were it not for one fact:
3 – We were unlikable.
A lot of schools, especially in the SEC, don’t like LSU, which is understandable. Some people who support other former SEC West may in fact hate LSU. But across the whole landscape of college football, no program may be more loved, either from a fan or an anthropological perspective, than LSU.
We are supposed to be fun, the drunk Cajuns who will cook anything and make it taste good before making the field smell like bourbon and acting irrationally. And we are that, but all of it was overshadowed by how wholly and remarkably unlikable Brian Kelly was and is.
Nobody liked us and everyone relished every opportunity to dump on us because our failure was Brian Kelly’s failure. And it was totally understandable, as Kelly invited no favor or attempted to curry it. He came in with his abrasive personality and only grew more abrasive as time wore on.
“Fit” is a word that means a lot, almost to a point where it doesn’t mean anything anymore. But truly, without a doubt, Brian Kelly was a bad fit for LSU, and this is the natural conclusion.
As far as next coaches go, I have my wishlist of coaches I want and coaches I don’t want. But whoever it is, I want them to be a fit for LSU in that they make us two things: Fun and Fearless. Because that’s LSU football.
Bring back the magic.
