Brian Kelly Makes it Clear He's Happy LSU Doesn't Waste His Time by Trying to Be an Actual College and All That Nonsense
Romeo Guzman. Shutterstock Images.As someone who figured prominently above the home stadium at Brian Kelly's last job would put it, For what does it profit a man if he signs a 10-year, $95 million coaching contract but loses his soul?
No sooner did he pull the Fighting Irish Exit on Notre Dame, ditch them as they were about to enter the National Championship playoffs, explained himself at a lifeless, monotone, early morning meeting that lasted less than 4 1/2 minutes:
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… and then landed in Louisiana and immediately started talking in exactly the kind of phony, affected, Southern drawl politicians adopt when they're trying to pander to the congregation at a traditionally Black Baptist church. And not the Masshole who'd spent the last dozen years in South Bend, Indiana that he is.
But if we've learned anything since, it's that there is no limit to Kelly's shamelessness.
There never was. It's just that being away from Notre Dame to a school where the motto is “It Just Means More" has removed all the guardrails. And now he has full reign to be the gargantuan fraud he's always wanted to be, but had to pretend he wasn't. Now he can just open up and let his full Brian Kellyishness fly. As he did in this ESPN profile:
“I loved my time at Notre Dame. I have nothing but great memories there. But the whole landscape there is different than it is here. It just is. There are priorities at Notre Dame. The architectural building needed to get built first. They ain’t building the architectural building here first. We’re building the athletic training facility first, [and] we’re in the midst of a $22 million addition to our athletic training facility. It’s something I said we needed, and we went and immediately raised the money."
You know what? Credit where credit is due. I rather respect him for coming right out and saying. For admitting he doesn't give a Tuppenny fuck about the Architecture Department. And reading between the lines, Engineering, Math, the Sciences, or any other aspect of campus life but his own. I'm sure the NCAA isn't thrilled to have one of their highest profile coaches saying the quiet part out loud.
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Those ads they run every game where each school gets to show the obligatory B-roll footage of coeds in lab coats and safety glasses pouring colored liquids into a test tube behind a simmering beaker might pay for themselves, but executives' and coaches' salaries do not. To keep that gravy train a-rollin', you've got to keep playing the part. Pray at the altar of academics. Pepper your interviews with buzzwords like "enrichment," catchphrases like student-athletes, and platitudes about how rewarding it is to be able to have a positive impact on these fine young people. So in a way you have to appreciate Kelly just dropping the veil and admitting that as long as he's getting $22 mil for a new gym, he couldn't care less if the architectural building collapsed on the heads of those engineering nerds like his football program has.
If nothing else, at least this time he's being honest with everyone. Proving there truly is a first time for everything.