LSU Football To Hire Notre Dame Coach Brian Kelly

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BATON ROUGE — This time, it could really happen.

LSU expects to complete the hiring process of Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly as its head coach as early as Tuesday, a source close to the search confirmed on Monday night.

Yahoo Sports' Pete Thamel, who broke the story that LSU target Lincoln Riley would leave Oklahoma's head coaching job for USC on Sunday, first reported the Kelly story on Monday.

For the third time in the last 22 years, LSU will hire a sitting head football coach at a major program, if Kelly indeed comes to Baton Rouge. LSU hired Michigan State coach Nick Saban after the 1999 season, and Oklahoma State coach Les Miles followed him after the 2004 season. Both won national championships.

Kelly, 60, is the same age as Ed Orgeron, who was fired after a 3-3 start this season effective at the end of the regular season, which was Saturday as the Tigers finished 6-6 overall and 3-5 in the SEC two years after a 15-0 national championship season.

LSU athletic director Scott Woodward thought that Riley was LSU bound as recently as last week, the source said, but Riley instead has accepted the USC job.

Kelly is a proven winner and is the most accomplished football coach LSU has ever hired at the time of the hiring. Kelly took the Irish to the College Football Playoff final four last season at 10-1 before losing to eventual national champion Alabama, 31-14. Kelly also took the Irish to the CFP semis in 2018 before a 30-3 loss to eventual national champion Clemson. He also took Notre Dame to the BCS national championship game in the 2012 season before a 42-14 loss to Alabama.

He is the winningest coach in Notre Dame history at 113-40 through 12 seasons. Notre Dame is ranked No. 6 at 11-1 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings. Kelly, an Everett, Massachusetts native, previously was head coach at Grand Valley State (1991-2003), Central Michigan (2004-06) and Cincinnati (2006-09) before going to Notre Dame in 2010.

 

 

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Guilbeau joined OutKick as an SEC columnist in September of 2021 after covering LSU and the Saints for 17 years at USA TODAY Louisiana. He has been a national columnist/feature writer since the summer of 2022, covering college football, basketball and baseball with some NFL, NBA, MLB, TV and Movies and general assignment, including hot dog taste tests. A New Orleans native and Mizzou graduate, he has consistently won Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) and Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) awards since covering Alabama and Auburn at the Mobile Press-Register (1993-98) and LSU and the Saints at the Baton Rouge Advocate (1998-2004). In 2021, Guilbeau won an FWAA 1st for a game feature, placed in APSE Beat Writing, Breaking News and Explanatory, and won Beat Writer of the Year from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association (LSWA). He won an FWAA columnist 1st in 2017 and was FWAA's top overall winner in 2016 with 1st in game story, 2nd in columns, and features honorable mention. Guilbeau completed a book in 2022 about LSU's five-time national champion coach - "Everything Matters In Baseball: The Skip Bertman Story" - that is available at www.acadianhouse.com, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble outlets. He lives in Baton Rouge with his wife, the former Michelle Millhollon of Thibodaux who previously covered politics for the Baton Rouge Advocate and is a communications director.