Fortuna Files: It's getting late early for Brian Kelly at LSU
Plus, could Texas re-set the market in what will already be a crazy coaching carousel?
Twenty-five thoughts from a sport whose off-field headlines somehow rival the drama that takes place on the field every Saturday:
1. Should we start with Steve Sarkisian or Brian Kelly? Let’s go with Kelly, since the smoke surrounding him is the freshest after a wild Saturday that began with speculation about Sark.
2. Kelly turned 64 on Saturday. It was not a pleasant birthday. His LSU team fell to 5-3 with games remaining at Alabama and at Oklahoma. It’s not just that the Tigers lost; it’s that they got run off the field by Texas A&M, 49-25, and that Kelly got openly insulted by the Aggies afterward. This is the second 20-plus-point home night loss for LSU in an 11-month span, after getting routed by the Tide in Death Valley last season. That’s unacceptable, as is the ABC broadcast repeatedly pointing out postgame how the overwhelming mob of Aggies fans celebrating their team’s road win just isn’t supposed to happen in a place like Baton Rouge.
3. The fit was always awkward with Kelly at LSU, and not just because of the cringey “family” intro. There were roughly 40 jobs I could have reasonably pegged him for when he was at Notre Dame — including all 32 NFL teams — and LSU would not have been one of them. The surprise wasn’t that he left the Irish; it was that he left for the Tigers.
4. Kelly has heard this everywhere he’s gone in the state of Louisiana, but the fact of the matter remains that each of the previous three LSU coaches has won a national championship, and each won it in Year 3 or Year 4. This is Year 4 for Kelly, and it’s not happening, as his program is all but assuredly out of the CFP conversation the rest of this season.