ATLANTA—It’s been a while since Brian Kelly did the whole summer media days thing, 2009 to be exact, which was his last season as coach at Cincinnati. Most of the talk surrounding Kelly this offseason is about whether or not he’ll fit in in his new home.
His first SEC media days didn’t feature any dancing, but one reporter did try to get the LSU coach to say the best food he’s had since the big move in a southern accent. He didn’t invoke the infamous “family” dialect, but crawfish étouffée and grilled oysters are on the top of his list. Seeing Kelly don an LSU lapel pin on his blazer still takes some getting used to, but it will be a season of many firsts.
“I've never been in many of the venues,” Kelly said. “I'll get an opportunity to play at Auburn this year. I'll get a chance to play at Kyle Field, in the Swamp. Those will be exciting opportunities, something that I've never experienced in my career of 32 years.”
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Kelly is learning a lot about a new part of the country, experiencing new traditions and figuring out the right way to honor them—leaning on his players to figure out how strongly they feel about them. He’s also not afraid to change something. At Notre Dame, Kelly moved the longstanding tradition of game-day mass to Friday night before home games. He joked about the juxtaposition of going to mass right before going to play a violent football game. (New coach Marcus Freeman has since replaced it due to the impact he said it had on him when he visited as a recruit.)
“What I’ve tried to do is educate myself on some of the traditions at LSU,” Kelly said. “Look, they used to have Mike the Tiger in a cage in front of the opponent’s locker room. Obviously, PETA got involved in that one and that no longer exists. So, some traditions die with just good judgment, but I think you have to know them.”
The tradition of awarding the No. 7 jersey to the program’s best player will continue—standout receiver Kayshon Boutte will wear it this year. Another tradition that isn’t going away in Louisiana is producing great football players. Kelly said extending the recruiting footprint into Northern Louisiana is a priority as he learns the territory in-state. The early returns on LSU’s 2023 recruiting class are good so far, as the class ranks within the top 10 with many Louisiana blue-chip prospects still uncommitted. Even before Kelly arrived, the Tigers were hardly in the running for Arch Manning, the top recruit in the country from Isidore Newman High School in New Orleans.
“I was surprised a little bit about the strength of a lot of the football programs’ academics. There’s a lot of poor academic high schools that are underfunded by the state that are just not really strong academically,” Kelly said. “But there are so many other really strong schools and there’s a strong Catholic population in the greater New Orleans and Baton Rouge area, so there’s a lot of really good private schools, and I didn’t know that. You can get into some really great schools with great football and good student-athletes.”
LSU and Notre Dame recruit nationally, but unlike the Irish, LSU has incredibly fertile recruiting territory right in its backyard and that proximity is a very different proposition for Kelly’s staff, most of which are new to their jobs except for offensive line coach Brad Davis. There is one thing that will help Kelly and his staff fit in quickly at a program where each of the past three coaches have won a national title—well, winning.
