ORLANDO, Florida – Brian Kelly departed Notre Dame’s lifetime job security for a brand-new “fay-mily” at LSU for one simple reason: to win a national championship. Trade the difficulties of an independent private school in Indiana for all of Louisiana’s gumbo and five-star linemen, and a coach as skilled as Kelly could salivate at the prospect of developing the next Alabama or Georgia team.
This is why Kelly sat in his postgame news conference late Sunday night, looking like a poker player whose profits had been wiped out by one terrible hand. His second LSU team, a preseason top-five pick with lofty goals of making a deep run into January, was blown out of the building in its season opener, a 45-24 loss to No. 8 Florida State.
Allowing an ACC opponent to score 31 consecutive second-half points was not part of the plan at halftime two years ago.
“We’re certainly not the football team I thought we were,” he remarked afterwards, later calling the game “a total failure on a coaching and a player’s standpoint.”
