At an age when many coaches looking to get out, Brian Kelly goes full speed ahead
You may measure the career of Brian Kelly by victories. He has 284 wins, give or take the dozen the NCAA made Notre Dame vacate. You may measure his career by winning percentage (.744), fifth among active FBS coaches with at least 10 years’ experience. Or, to get the truest measure of the skill and drive of a 60-year-old who has been a college football head coach for more than half his life, think about this:
Kelly is the first Fighting Irish coach to leave without a.) being fired or b.) fleeing the stress of the job since 1941. Elmer Layden, one of the Four Horsemen, had a winning percentage at Notre Dame of .783 over eight seasons when the president of the university, Father J. Hugh O’Donnell, offered him a one-year contract. Layden started looking around and wound up as NFL commissioner.
Layden doubled his salary by going to the NFL, which offered him $20,000 per year. Kelly isn’t making Roger Goodell money, which is $64 million per annum (so that’s enough out of you about crazy college coaching salaries), but he will make $95 million over 10 years “plus incentives.” The one thing we all know about Kelly is that he doesn’t need incentives. The needle on his tachometer still runs close to the red.
But for how long?
That’s the calculated risk that Scott Woodward, the impresario of an LSU athletic director, has taken with his latest dramatic coup d’coach. Woodward is the guy who sprung Jimbo Fisher from Florida State to Texas A&M. He knows how to win a press conference with a coach who can win more than press conferences.
In Kelly, Woodward hires a coach who tamed the beast that is the Notre Dame head-coaching job. Kelly won 113 games with the Irish, surpassing the sainted Knute Rockne earlier this season, his 12th at Notre Dame. No one other than Rockne has lasted more than 11 years. Kelly’s departure leaves Rockne alone atop the longevity list, which feels about right.
What doesn’t feel right is Kelly leaving with Notre Dame on the edge of making the College Football Playoff. The outrage among Irish fans may last for decades. The outrage among the rest of us may not make it to the end of the week. In a week when Lincoln Riley left Oklahoma for USC, it seems apparent that the rules are changing.
Can Kelly succeed in his 60s?
Here’s one rule Kelly intends to break – history tells us that there aren’t many coaches who succeed in their 60s. You’ll give me Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden and Nick Saban. I’ll wait for you to fill out the fingers on that one hand, at least with guys who will win at a rate higher than the .718 that got Ed Orgeron (51-20) fired.
Lloyd Carr retired from Michigan at 62, Tom Osborne retired from Nebraska at 60 and Mike Bellotti from Oregon at 58. Frank Beamer and Steve Spurrier both faltered in their 60s. All five are College Football Hall of Fame coaches. The demands of the modern game are unrelenting, and the majority of coaches cave in to those demands right about the time when Kelly is taking on a new challenge.
He appears to be an outlier, propelled by a motor similar to the one moving Saban to 272 victories, give or take the five that the NCAA made Alabama vacate. That leaves Saban behind Kelly by a dozen.
When Kelly had a bad season at Notre Dame, going 4-8 in 2016, he revamped his staff and rededicated himself to coaching. The Fighting Irish have won 54 games in the five seasons since. The one prize he has failed to win is a national championship, yet he never is identified as the Best Coach to Never Win A Natty. That may say less about Kelly than it does about the times. Notre Dame hasn’t been competitive in its playoff appearances, and conventional wisdom gives Kelly a pass because the Irish don’t fish in the same recruiting waters as, to keep the nautical theme, the Crimson Tide.
LSU is betting that Kelly, unbound by the academic constraints of the Golden Dome, can recruit well enough on unfamiliar turf to retake the SEC West, the Paul Dietzel Pod or whatever format the conference chooses after Texas and Oklahoma arrive. You wonder whether a Boston Irishman who has spent 31 seasons as a head coach no farther south than Cincinnati can sell his magic to recruits in Houma and Lafayette, St. Rose, Mamou and all those other towns where they worship the Fightin’ Tigers.
Saban came to LSU from the upper Midwest (Michigan State) and succeeded. Recruits today understand success. What they want is a coach who can get them to Sunday. If they get a degree and mature into men in the process, that will make Mama happy, but for the players, success is measured in victories and Goodell hugs.
Kelly, between his record and his personality, will command their attention. The question is how long he can fend off Father Time. There’s a guy who’s undefeated.