I Could Listen to Brian Kelly's Shameless Hypocrisy on His Players Making NIL Money All Day Long

Jonathan Bachman. Getty Images.

It's perhaps the perfect example of irony that at the same time we're seeing a story about a top-tier college wideout turning down lucrative offers of NIL money to stay at his school:

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… that we get Brian Kelly - who has firmly established himself as the poster child for WHY athletes like Zay Flowers deserve to profit from their playing careers - decry the unfairness of the new system:

“Certainly, I am in favor of the student-athletes promoting their brand, and having their name, their image and their likeness. We’re in a situation now where it’s unintended consequences. I don’t know if anybody thought we’d get to the point where seniors in high school were having multi-million dollar contracts. We’re looking at guys entering the transfer portal because they want to get paid to play. But that’s not name, image and likeness was intended to do. And so there’s going to have to be corrections. It’s not a sustainable model from that perspective. 

“I want to be able to develop, recruit, retain my players. And retention, from our perspective, that's providing the opportunity for our guys to earn name, image and likeness opportunities, and that'll allow you to retain your players. I'm not a big fan of a freshman coming in, not having played a down, and having a big contract. That’s not good for your locker room. That’s not good for anybody, and the same holds true for transfers as well."

It's rare that you ever see any negative human trait so perfectly expressed as Brian Kelly has managed to put his own blatant disingenuousness into words here. If for some reason we ever decide to build a Tomb of the Unknown Hypocrite, this quote will have to be carved in granite on it.

It truly is impressive that anyone could be un-selfaware. Or even more so, if he understands exactly how this is going to be received, and simply give no shits. I mean, imagine the adamantium balls it takes to claim you're worried about how his players getting paid for their own name, image and likeness will do to a locker room when he did this to his locker room where no one but him was getting paid:

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Kelly is a curly mustache, a black cape and two bags with "$" on them away from being the perfect cartoon villain. And yet he has the unmitigated gall to say he's worried about the negative effects of money on college football. The unfettered audacity to worry about how boosters are going to lure athletes to other programs, while he sleeps every night on a mountain of LSU treasure like Smaug. He's getting the vapors and dropping onto his fainting couch at the mere thought of one of his "student athletes" telling him he's taking the money to go elsewhere. Maybe even at some inopportune moment like - as they say at Notre Dame, God forbid - the Tigers are heading into a New Year's Day bowl game. You wouldn't want to have someone's desire for personal wealth get in the way of the greater good of the program, now would you? That would be wrong. 

So in a weird, backward, twisted way, you almost have to admire the shamelessness on display here. Brian Kelly is a TV minister preaching the Gospels while buying his fifth mansion. He's a politician taking bribes while campaigning on getting money out of politics. He's a business mogul taking government bailouts while bitching about his taxes paying for programs for working people. 

He's all about everyone selling their services to the highest bidder, just as long as "everyone" refers only to the percentage of the college football population that answers to the name "Brian Kelly." Anything that makes his very lucrative new job harder? Well that's going to need "corrections." 

I just look forward to watching him explain it the first time LSU's boosters use NILs to steal a player from another program. It should be impressive. Kelly has a genius-level talent for being a weasel.