The buck stops with the head coach, LSU’s Brian Kelly said Monday, and lack of awareness is not an excuse when there’s a problem in the program.
Kelly was asked during the annual SEC Media Days in Nashville, Tenn., about the hazing scandal which led to the firing of longtime Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald on July 10.
“It’s a very difficult situation because I know Pat and I have the utmost respect for him as a person, as a family man, as a father,” Kelly said Monday. “But the reality of it is coaches are the leaders of their program. When things are not going the way they should be, there’s an accountability, and I don’t think he’s somebody that would walk away from accountability at any time, and I’m not here to speak for him, but I can tell you in my situation that a head coach is walking around those halls.”
Kelly has been a head coach since 1991, when he took over at NCAA Division II Grand Valley State. The top post at Division I Central Michigan, Cincinnati and Notre Dame followed before he made his LSU debut in 2022.
While the coach can’t be everywhere, he has assistant coaches and staff that also are around the players.
“A head coach is in the locker room,” Kelly said. “A head coach is eating with his team. A head coach knows his leadership team. He also has many other support staff members that are in constant contact with his football team. The strength staff, your mental performance teams. You have so many different outlets to touch those players on a day-to-day basis.
“That’s how we operate within our program.”
The Tigers went 10-4 in Kelly’s first season, including a 32-31 overtime victory at home over then-No. 6 Alabama. LSU won the Southeastern Conference’s West Division and lost 50-30 to Georgia in the SEC Championship Game before downing Purdue 63-7 in the Citrus Bowl.
Kelly said measuring the gap between two-time defending national champion Georgia and the rest of the SEC will have to come from results on the field — the score and the competitiveness of the games.
“We’ll only have that opportunity if we get into the championship game against Georgia,” Kelly said.
“I know that based upon how we’ve recruited and how we’ll continue to recruit, that we’ll have a football roster that will be able to compete against Georgia,” he continued. “Is that right now? No, it’s not. But if we continue to do what we’re doing, we’re going to have a roster that can compete against Georgia, and then it’s just a matter of getting it done on the playing field so everybody then can assess they’ve closed the gap.”
–Field Level Media