LSU, Kelly agree 10-year deal worth at least $95M
LSU and newly hired coach Brian Kelly have agreed to a 10-year contract worth $95 million plus incentives. Kelly has coached at Notre Dame for the past 12 seasons and eclipsed Knute Rockne for career victories with the Fighting Irish. LSU athletic director Scott Woodward says Kelly represents the “epitome of a winner.“Kelly worked his way up to Notre Dame by following up his Division II national titles at Grand Valley State with winning stints at Central Michigan and Cincinnati. He arrived in Louisiana on Tuesday and his formal introduction on campus is set for today.
LSU formally announced the hiring of Kelly on Tuesday.
The hiring of Kelly — who has led Notre Dame for the past 12 seasons and eclipsed Knute Rockne for career victories with the storied Fighting Irish — came together on Monday night in yet another blockbuster coaching move in college football.
“Brian Kelly is the epitome of a winner,” Woodward said. “He has built and sustained success at every program he’s led, from multiple undefeated regular seasons and National Coach of the Year honors to (Division II) national titles and College Football Playoff berths. His credentials and consistency speak for themselves.”
Kelly replaces Ed Orgeron, a Louisiana native who won a national title at LSU just two seasons ago with Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Joe Burrow leading the Tigers to a 15-0 record. Orgeron has gone 11-11 since and agreed in October to a $17 million buyout that would have him step down at the end of this season.
Orgeron coached his final game last Saturday, when the Tigers upset then-no. 14 Texas A&M to finish the regular season 6-6.
Like Orgeron, Kelly is 60 but the similarities more or less end there. Orgeron is a Cajun raised in the shadow of shrimp trawlers on the Bayou
Lafourche southwest of New Orleans. He was raised on LSU football and idolized the Tigers stars of the past.
Kelly came from an Irish-catholic family in the Boston area and is bound to be far more familiar with using nut crackers to pick the meat out of a lobster claw than with sucking seasoned juices from the heads of boiled crawfish.
But he has recruited in Louisiana, where LSU gets much of its elite home-grown talent. In recent history, Louisiana has produced as much NFL talent per capita as any state.
“I could not be more excited to join a program with the commitment to excellence, rich traditions, and unrivaled pride and passion of LSU football,” Kelly said. “I am fully committed to recruiting, developing, and graduating elite student-athletes, winning championships, and working together with our administration to make Louisiana proud.
“Our potential is unlimited,” Kelly added. “I cannot wait to call Baton Rouge home.”
LSU scheduled a flight for Kelly to Baton Rouge on Tuesday, inviting fans to greet the coach at the airport, and set Kelly’s introductory media conference for today.
Kelly is 113-40 as a head coach, including a current run of five straight double-digit victory seasons.
No previous Notre Dame coach has left the Irish, winners of eight AP national championships, to take a job at another school since the AP poll started in 1936. Rockne’s successor, Hunk Anderson, went from Notre Dame to North Carolina State after going 3-5-1 in 1933.
Notre Dame (11-1) remains in contention to reach the College Football Playoff for the third time in the last four years.
LSU paid Orgeron nearly $9 million this season, making him among the highest paid coaches in college football along with Alabama’s Nick Saban, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, Texas A&M’S Jimbo Fisher and, in the past month, Mel Tucker of Michigan State and James Franklin at Penn State. That list certainly now includes USC’S Lincoln Riley, who bolted Oklahoma over the weekend in the other big coaching move this week.