LSU hired a big name coach, not a big game coach, when landing Brian Kelly.
Brian Kelly no closer to national championship than day he left Notre Dame.
Brian Kelly’s buyout topping $53 million might get him into 2026 on the hot seat.
And now that Kelly’s continued to be exactly who he’s always shown he is — a steady winner who consistently loses the big games — whose fault is that?
Athletic director Scott Woodward hired a program builder and a stable hand, but not someone who wins the stiffest clashes.
LSU hired a big name coach in 2021, not a big game coach.
All Kelly’s done in four seasons at LSU is be exactly who he is. If he keeps it up, that’ll get him fired.
Brian Kelly no closer to national title than when he left Notre Dame
Never mind that LSU is getting the coach it hired, because it paid for a national championship coach. Kelly looks no closer to achieving that feat than he was in his first season.
In fact, if this LSU team donors heavily invested in played against Kelly’s initial Tigers squad, it would probably lose to Jayden Daniels and Co. by multiple scores.
That, too, is going to get Kelly fired, if this keeps up. He set the bar high with an initial 10-win season that exceeded most realistic expectations. Subsequently, he keeps coming short of that bar. It’s looking more and more like Kelly’s 2022 victory against Nick Saban will go down as his finest hour.
Kelly’s now 5-10 against ranked opponents at LSU, after a loss to No. 18 Vanderbilt. He said he left Notre Dame for LSU because he wanted to challenge himself against the big boys in the nation’s most rugged conference.
Back at Notre Dame, Kelly could’ve chased playoff bids by playing a cushy November schedule filled with Boston College, Navy, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Stanford. At LSU, the beast of a schedule he sought is consuming him whole.
LSU’s two-loss season coming up short of expectations
Kelly told anyone who’d listen this past offseason he had in his possession his best LSU roster to date. With Kelly helping lead the charge, LSU passed the hat for donor dollars, and it used the investment to buy the nation’s top-ranked haul of transfers. Pair that with a talented veteran quarterback Garrett Nussmeier, and you get a preseason full of hype and big expectations.
And when Kelly toppled Dabo Swinney in Week 1, you could forgive yourself for believing this trip around the sun would be different. Except, we didn’t know then that Swinney’s Clemson Tigers would become an even bigger bust than Kelly’s Tigers.
Since then, Kelly’s been outcoached by Lane Kiffin and Clark Lea, while LSU got toppled by Mississippi and Vanderbilt.
LSU just can’t maintain an identity. The defense that carried it to victory against Clemson and Florida was no match for Diego Pavia. Vanderbilt never punted until the fourth quarter in this 31-24 takedown of LSU in Nashville.
“A disappointing day,” Kelly said afterward.
For LSU fans, a maddening day.
The Tigers were so thoroughly whipped, Vanderbilt fans didn’t even bother to storm the field to celebrate their first win against LSU since 1990. Anyway, the result hardly counted as a surprise with the way LSU has repeatedly underwhelmed.
There’s no horrendous shame in losing on the road against Ole Miss, which appears playoff caliber, or to a Vanderbilt team that’s playing far beyond its name. To lose to both, though, pushes LSU to the brink of playoff elimination after it pushed its chips in on what even Kelly himself teased as potentially a special season.
One more loss will land LSU in an also-ran bowl. With games against Texas A&M, Alabama and Oklahoma among what’s left, there’s no reason to think the Tigers won’t lose more than once.
Maybe, Kelly can stave off a firing and retain his hot seat status into 2026. Unlike the SEC’s other embattled coaches, Kelly’s avoided an utter disaster season. Unlike Billy Napier at Florida or Hugh Freeze at Auburn, Kelly’s at least managed to not lose to a Group of Five opponent in his LSU tenure.
And, perhaps more importantly, his buyout will top $53 million at season’s end. That would rank as the second-largest in college football history.
Kelly’s also recruiting better than any other hot-seated coach in the country, with a decent but not elite class that ranks 11th nationally in the 247Sports Composite.
But, nobody can watch LSU lose to Vanderbilt and think the Kelly experiment finishing in a national championship or even a playoff berth is likelier than it ending in a whopper of a buyout check.
LSU paid for a national championship coach when it plundered Notre Dame’s cupboard in 2021, but it got Brian Kelly.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.