Injury preceded insult.
Brian Kelly was steamrolled not once but twice as he stalked the sidelines in 2025 asLSU footballcoach, colliding with an official in his team’s opening win at Clemson and again in a Game 3 win against Florida.
He would notch just two more wins as top Tiger.
By late October, the insult arrived:Kelly was fired Oct. 26, 2025— the only time in a coaching career that's spanned parts of five decades Kelly saw someone else dictate his coaching coordinates.
Since that time, the 64-year-old Kelly — Notre Dame’s all-time winningest coach before he bolted for the bayou after the 2021 regular season — largely has avoided public comment, or the spotlight.
For one thing, Kelly’s been rehabilitating the torn labrum he suffered Sept. 13 when 6-7, 317-pound tackle Weston Davis finished blocking his Florida defender all the way through his head coach on the LSU sideline.
“I didn’t have the surgery done, went with an alternative way of doing it with stem-cell (therapy) and peptides,” Kelly exclusively told USA TODAY Sports in a wide-ranging interview. “... The most conventional way was to get it done with surgery. But, after what happened at LSU and I was out of a job, the last thing you want to do is be stuck in a sling.”
Splitting his recovery between Louisiana and Florida, Kelly has absorbed his share of slings and arrows in the nearly six months since LSU fired him less than five years through a decade-long, almost-$100-million pact.
“I would say there’s an easy, simple answer,” Kelly said of what went wrong at LSU, “and I didn’t win enough games. There’s a longer answer to why that didn’t happen, I’ll probably have to write a book about that. There’s always cause and effect and the effect was I didn’t win enough games, period.
“I guess you do have to start with what is winning enough games? We were 34-14, 22-3 at home when I was fired. We had two 10-win seasons, won an SEC (West Division) championship, had the No. 1 offense in college football, a Heisman Trophy winner. When you look at what is winning and what keeps you employed, other people make those decisions. But it starts with what is defined as winning, and unfortunately it wasn’t defined as enough winning leading into being fired.”
Kelly has heard the chatter about all those alleged tee times, of which — in well-paid unemployment, courtesy the $54 million buyout owed to him by LSU — he’s only recently resumed fully swinging golf clubs from the left-shoulder labrum injury.
“If you believe some, I played 350 rounds of golf,” Kelly said. “Which, obviously, is ridiculous. I probably played 30 over the last three years."
Does Brian Kelly have any advice for Lane Kiffin?
He knows what he would tell his successor, Lane Kiffin, at LSU.
“Lane doesn’t need advice,” said Kelly, who’s faced off against Kiffin in the Notre Dame-USC and LSU-Ole Miss rivalries. “He’s seen it from the NFL to SC to building a program... I don’t think I’m telling him anything he doesn’t know.
“The world we live in today, Michigan just won a basketball championship with five transfers. You can do it, but there are so many moving pieces. I don’t think he needs any advice. I think you just continue to be who you are. I think that's all you can be. People are going to judge you based upon what they think, anyways. So, just be Lane Kiffin."
Will Brian Kelly coach again?
Kelly is out of coaching right now, except when he isn’t.
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There are multiple schools contracting his services as a consultant, Charles Huff’s Memphis program among them.
Kelly believes he is meant to be a coach. So, there’s the time he devotes, almost daily he says, to preparing to coach again.
Watching film “a couple hours a day” in his home office on Florida’s west coast.
Plotting staff assembly — and the priorities of that next supporting cast.
“I think you look at everything you’ve done throughout your career and you’ve got a great process and you know that process has been successful,” said Kelly, a winner of more than 300 college games who captured two NCAA Division II national titles and three times had Notre Dame vying to end that program’s now-38-year title drought. “I’ve had two losing seasons in 35 years, so you know your process is good.
“This past transition for me gave me some time to think about the things I would have done differently or better. We were in a real new change in college football, where building a front office was crucial. Making sure that your hires were the right hires. I think most of the hindsight for me, would be based upon not the culture or process of building a championship program but probably the hiring process. And, making sure that you have the pieces in place to handle where college football is today. Building out a really good front office immediately. I think we may have been in a great place at the end, but we didn’t get there soon enough, maybe. I think continuity with your coordinators is very important.”
A former Broyles Award finalist under Kelly, Chip Long was stunningly fired by Kelly as Notre Dame offensive coordinator following the 2019 season. The two have mended their relationship since that time; Long reached out after Kelly was dismissed at LSU.
He thinks Kelly will coach again. Would work for him again, even.
“One of the special qualities I always thought about him, I just thought he had an amazing big-picture outlook,” Long told USA TODAY Sports on Monday, April 14. “And the way he adapted through the years, he had a good thumb in the wind, a good pulse where things were nationally in football.
“For his ability to adapt and be willing to go away from things that might’ve worked in the past, that’s something I thought made him an outstanding leader and CEO of the entire program. That’s why I think he can coach again.”
Until then, there’s going to be more Kelly on various media platforms, CBS college football studio work and some radio/podcasts spots expected among them.
All three of Kelly’s children with wife, Paqui, continue working in or adjacent to college football. Patrick Kelly works with Ole Miss football general manager Austin Thomas; Kenzel Kelly is in his first year as linebackers coach for NCAA D-III program John Carroll University and daughter, Grace, works in the name, image and likeness division of Athletes First.
What does Brian Kelly miss most about coaching?
Long regarded more NFL-CEO coach-type than collegial goodfellow, Kelly insists it’s the everyday football moments rather than penning his career epitaph that leaves him eager for another coaching opportunity.
“I think the motivator for me is what you miss,” Kelly said. “The decisions that were made (at LSU), those were other people. I didn’t have any control over that. What you lose is relationships with players, when I’ve been doing it my entire career. I miss that the most.
“I still want to make a difference. All the young men that have been under my charge over 35 years, I feel like I have a lot still to give. Even with all this money in college football, they still need mentorship, still need development. Money aside, I have a lot to give. And my motivation is to want to get back to building relationships and successful programs in college football.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Brian Kelly: What went wrong at LSU, advice for Lane Kiffin, what's next
