LSU Tigers football coach Brian Kelly may not survive the day in Baton Rouge.
The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel stated that by the time college football’s top 25 rankings came out on Sunday, LSU won’t be ranked, and the 64-year-old could be $53.3 million richer from his buyout clause. Kelly’s team lost 49-25 to the TAMU Aggies on Saturday night in Death Valley to fall to 5-3 on the year. This was their second straight loss and third of the season.
AD Scott Woodward may not have the patience to keep Kelly, Mandel writes, based on how he fired Ed Orgeron two years after engineering the magical 2019/2020 College Football Playoff National Championship run.
“No. 20 LSU (5-3, 2-3) has lost three of its past four, and will no longer be ranked come Sunday afternoon. We’ll see whether Kelly, who has a staggering $53 million buyout, will still be employed by then,” Mandel wrote.
Mandel described the top reasons Kelly will be fired, which range from football strategy to simply having a personality that doesn’t fit in the Deep South.
“Woodward is the same AD who canned Ed Orgeron less than two years removed from a national title. Kelly was hired to win one himself, but his program has only grown farther from contention with each season. LSU went all in on its 2025 team — Kelly said in August the program had tripled its payroll this year to $18 million — and thus expected returns. But a season-opening win at top-five Clemson, now 3-4, proved deceiving, and it soon became clear LSU’s offensive line was a mess. And its defense, playing without star linebacker Whit Weeks, has imploded the past two weeks,” Mandel wrote.
“Compounding all of that, Kelly is famously … what’s the word … divisive? Saturday night, the cameras showed him yelling in quarterback Garrett Nussmeier’s face, cursing out offensive coordinator Joe Sloan over the headset and trying to throw that same headset in disgust, only to realize it was attached to him. LSU is off next week before visiting yet another top-five foe, Alabama. There are $53 million reasons to assume he’ll still be on the sideline, but as we’ve seen over and over this season, schools always find the money.”
Kelly has been a poor cultural fit for the program since the day he arrived in Louisiana sporting a fake southern accent on December 3 for LSU’s basketball game against the Ohio Bobcats on December 3, 2021. His recruiting videos also had a touch of cringe in them that didn’t play well with SEC fanbases.
In terms of a football fit, the results speak for themselves. The Tigers have gotten worse since their SEC Championship appearance in 2022. Worse yet, the team’s payroll has ballooned as NIL has expanded.
The results don’t fit the investment. LSU fans will do everything they personally can to ensure Kelly is gone from this program as soon as possible.
We’ll see if the administration is in lock-step with its fanbase.