Brian Kelly firing: Josh Pate reacts to dismissal, hammers him for being 'checked out'

Brian Kelly was fired at LSU on Sunday, ending a tenure of three and a half seasons that didn’t meet the standard down in Baton Rouge. Josh Pate went deeper into Death Valley, though, as to why he didn’t work out with the Tigers.

‘Josh Pate’s College Football Show’ was live on Sunday around the time that Kelly’s firing went public this evening. That let Pate react in the moment in explaining how it went for him at LSU, which goes back to the very start with Kelly not really being what LSU, or the state that it’s in for that matter, is about to begin with.

“Brian Kelly never understood the assignment at LSU. He never understood what the L stood for, and it turns out the Ls ended up just standing for losses. But the L on his chest right there stands for Louisiana. Brian Kelly had no interest in Louisiana. He had interest in two letters – one of them is B, the other one is K. And, L didn’t really have much place in it, to the point where, he got there and, almost as part of this preconceived agenda, flushed a lot of Louisiana people out of the building at Louisiana State University, including many who could have been very useful to him,” said Pate. “You know, it’s funny. It doesn’t have anything to do with him being an outsider, okay. Brian Kelly was an outsider – sure he’s not from the south, sure he’s not from Louisiana. Neither was Saban. Saban is the best they’ve ever had there. Well, where’d he come from? He came from West Virginia, by way of Michigan State. But, I’ll tell you what he did. He looked at the LSU job and was attracted to it because of Louisiana. Brian Kelly was attracted to it because he thought he could make a lot of money, and just kind of go spend some more money and get better athletes down there and win a title doing it the way he’s always done it. And, never did it factor into his decision-making – maybe I should harness what makes Louisiana great?”

However, that was just the very start as far as Pate’s criticisms of Kelly during his time at LSU. He, not trying to be personal about it, shared several details as to why his time with the Tigers was unsuccessful and, as a result, led to his firing today. Among those he said included being more so about the status of this particular job than actually doing it, as well as being checked out of several key topics within the program like recruiting and hires. Frankly, Pate didn’t care for how Kelly went about having one of the best jobs in all of college football.

“It was really obvious, like, as time went on? You noticed that my tune changed on Brian Kelly. Anyone who’s watched the show for a while knows, when LSU hired him, I thought he’d do really good things there. My tune pretty radically changed on him a couple years ago, and I stopped praising him. We didn’t have him on the show anymore. That was a conscious effort,” said Pate. “Now, Brian Kelly never did anything to me behind the scenes. He was always really good to us, so there was nothing personal, there was no vendetta. It’s personal to me because I love LSU. LSU, in 2019, was kind of responsible for this show blowing up, so I’ve always had a very, very special corner of my heart that’s reserved for LSU. And I saw a guy that didn’t properly respect the job he had, and didn’t fully appreciate the job he had. He appreciated making the money. He appreciated the idea of having LSU on his chest, because it meant, hey, I’m a major SEC head coach that’s making eight figures per year. I like that idea. I like standing on top of what other people have built to try and grab a brass ring that I couldn’t grab at Notre Dame. I like that idea, but I’m not so in love with the idea of making myself one of them. He didn’t ever want to be one of them, one of you, one of us – whatever you want to call it.”

“So, I cooled on him a couple of years ago because I kind of found out what the inner workings were about down there. He was checked out. He was totally checked out. Now, I don’t mean that in the kind of way that a teacher is checked out the last two weeks of spring semester when she knows she’s about to retire – not that kind of checked out. A college football coach checked out is still working a ton of hours, so I don’t mean it like that. But, in the most critical parts of roster construction season there – portal, recruiting? This guy was on a beach, and it never really got talked about publicly and I never talked about it publicly. But, hey, man. He’s gone now, so I’ll talk to you about it now,” Pate continued. “I lost all professional respect for how he was going about his business there when I found out how checked out he was on some of the most critical parts of LSU Football. And, here’s the thing. It’s not a personal thing with him. I’m fine with Brian Kelly personally. But, professionally, there are not many jobs like the head coach at LSU. Some would argue it’s the best job in the sport – if you don’t believe that, it’s a top-five job in the sport. So, however you view that, only a few select people get to hold those positions. You’ve got to dedicate your life to it, and he didn’t. He dedicated some of it, but, I mean, the guy is on a beach in Florida when a lot of the most critical periods of the calendar are going on and there are other folks just grinding away in that building. And, in some cases, you’re landing kids he knows very little about. Guys, they added staffers that, in some cases, he didn’t know a ton about.”

“So, that’s what had me check out on Brian Kelly…I didn’t have a lot of respect for the way he was going about doing things there” said Pate. “I mean, it’s just pathetic to have watched how this went down the last few weeks…The strategy was position yourself to take credit if it works, and then, when you see it not working, reposition yourself to be sure there are several bodies in front of you to throw under the bus long before it’s time for yours to be thrown under there.”

That all said, Kelly is now out at LSU. And, with that, the Tigers, at least by the sound of that, might be in a better position moving forward, as one of the best head coaching jobs in the sport just came open this cycle with plenty of people more than willing to take it, says Pate.

“This can be the best job in the country. The right person would view it as the best job in the country. Pretty much any coach would view it as a top-five job,” said Pate. “But, this is such a bombshell. I don’t want to overstate.”

“I said the other day, I think you’d be pretty surprised at how many names would be in the running if this job ever opened up. This job, in the coaching world, is viewed a little bit differently…I think it is revered by a lot of people,” Pate said. “It can be the best job in the country, guys…This is going to be the coaching search that every other coaching search works downstream of.”