LSU’s head football coach is expected to be Brian Kelly, according to reports. LSU officials have been in talks with the Notre Dame Football Coach for over a month now and are set to offer him a 10-year contract worth $40 million.
The “Notre Dame football coach” is a new head coach that the LSU Tigers are set to hire. Sources say that he will be hired in the coming weeks.
Brian Kelly is leaving Notre Dame to become the new head football coach at LSU, according to ESPN sources.
In the next 24 hours, an agreement is expected to be reached.
Kelly, who is in his 12th season at Notre Dame, will succeed Ed Orgeron, who said on Oct. 17 that he will not return to LSU as coach in 2022, less than two years after leading the Tigers to a national title and undefeated season.
Kelly, 60, surpassed Knute Rockne as the winningest coach in Notre Dame history earlier this season. He is 113-40 in 12 seasons (with 21 wins voided by the NCAA from the 2012 and 2013 seasons), leading the Irish to the BCS championship game in 2012 and berths in the College Football Playoff in 2018 and 2020.
Kelly reportedly texted the Notre Dame players late Monday night, alerting them that he would be leaving the school and regretting that they learned of his departure “via social media or press stories,” according to sources. Kelly assured the players that he will tell them more at a team meeting on Tuesday at 7 a.m.
Notre Dame, which finished the season 11-1 and is still in position to make their third College Football Playoff in four years, is placed No. 6 in the newest CFP rankings. On Oct. 2, No. 4 Cincinnati handed the Fighting Irish their sole setback of the season.
No prior Notre Dame coach has ever left the Irish, who have won eight national titles, according to the Associated Press.
Kelly’s resignation was unexpected, according to Notre Dame insiders who talked with ESPN earlier Monday. Kelly was contacted by LSU early this autumn, according to sources, but he turned down the position. Over the weekend, LSU made another surge.
Kelly spoke to reporters last week about the potential of leaving Notre Dame for another position, saying, “No, it’s not true. Mike Tomlin, the coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, had the finest line, right? My wife would want to look at it first, until that magical godmother drops by with that $250 million cheque. I’d have to check with her beforehand.”
According to ESPN’s Chris Low, Luke Fickell of Cincinnati will be a major candidate to succeed Kelly at Notre Dame. Fickell’s timing, on the other hand, would be less than optimal. His unbeaten Bearcats are on the verge of making the College Football Playoff if they win the AAC title game against Houston on Saturday.
Several other big-name institutions have shown interest in Fickell in recent years, but sources close to him claimed earlier this year that the two positions he would find most difficult to turn down are Notre Dame and Ohio State, the latter being his alma mater.
According to ESPN, Notre Dame defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman is also being considered for the head coaching position.
Kelly has a collegiate coaching record of 263-96-2, including two Division II national championships at Grand Valley State and ten AP top-10 finishes. He transferred from Cincinnati, where he had a 34-6 record and two New Year’s Six bowl invitations.
Kelly provided Notre Dame stability and success for the first time in in two decades.
He hasn’t added a national title, but the Fighting Irish are winning at a rate they haven’t seen since Lou Holtz helmed the school in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1988, Holtz and the Irish won the national championship.
After Holtz, Notre Dame went through three more coaches, none of them were able to lead the team to long-term success.
There have been 12 occasions in the last 30 years of a coach winning at least 11 games in his last season as the head coach of a Power 5/AQ institution.
Five of the 12 have departed for the NFL; five have retired or resigned as a result of NCAA infractions or controversies; and two have moved on to another college football team.
Brian Kelly leaving Cincinnati for Notre Dame and Brian Kelly leaving Notre Dame for LSU are the two CFB examples.
— Stats & Information from ESPN
After the 2009 season, Notre Dame hired Kelly away from Cincinnati to replace Charlie Weis. Kelly had to wait a long time to find the proper combination of coaching staff and recruiting strategy to transform the Irish into a consistent national contender. The Irish have gone 54-9 after falling 4-8 in 2016.
On Saturday, LSU completed a 6-6 regular season by defeating Texas A&M at home in Orgeron’s last game. Following the victory, he revealed that he would not coach in LSU’s next bowl game, with offensive line coach Brad Davis serving as the game’s interim coach.
“I wish the new coach the best of success in the world,” Orgeron stated on Saturday. “I’ll always be an LSU supporter.”
LSU has gone 11-11 since winning the national championship in 2019 behind Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow, and Orgeron has been accused twice in the last year of wrongly handling claims of sexual misconduct by a player.
LSU was paying Orgeron $9 million a season, which put him in a group with Alabama’s Nick Saban, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, and Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher as the best paid coaches in college football. Kelly’s actual yearly compensation at Notre Dame, a private institution, is undisclosed, although it is estimated to be in the millions of dollars.
LSU has been linked to a number of coaches, including Fisher, whom Orgeron defeated on Saturday and who has categorically rejected leaving Texas A&M for any position this summer. Lincoln Riley of Oklahoma debunked rumors that he was in the running for the LSU job over the weekend, only to take the job at USC a day later.
Kelly’s projected appointment at LSU was initially reported by Yahoo! Sports.
This article was written with the help of the Associated Press.
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The “LSU football recruiting” is a story that has been out for some time, but the sources say that it is official. The school will hire Brian Kelly as its new head coach. Reference: lsu football recruiting.
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