Bohls: Is Brian Kelly the right fit for LSU? If the wins come, absolutely

ATLANTA — Brian Kelly has been taken to task, if not the woodshed, and has yet to coach a game at LSU.

Welcome to the South, outsider.

The beefs with the former Notre Dame coach, who has never coached south of the Mason-Dixon Line, became very public and almost instantaneously.

For example:

What’s with the suddenly adopted Cajun accent?

Did he just trade pasta and lobster for catfish etouffe and shrimp poboys?

And we all know how much fam-uh-lee means to him.

Is he really that bad a dancer?

Jeepers, let the man have a game first before the second-guessing season begins.

All the premature criticism came down to one factor: Does Kelly fit at LSU?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Does it even matter if he fits?

Nope.

I contend it doesn’t in the slightest so long as he embraces the Cajun culture like his own fam-uh-lee, eats some gumbo and grilled oysters at least every other day, and, oh yeah, wins big at LSU. Mostly if he wins big.

Winning fits.

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Ed Orgeron fit there. For a while, until LSU realized he’s more (gravelly) talk and (plenty of) bluster, recruiter and motivator than X’s and O’s smart and organized and disciplined. Kelly is no Southern good ol’ boy, but he’s smart and he’s proven and he’s committed. In less than eight months, he has hit the ground running and has hired 48 new staffers and sent a message that he’s his own man.

Les Miles fit there for a bit as well until he kind of chased himself out of Baton Rouge all the way to Kansas and then into early retirement.

And guess what? Kelly is twice the coach either of those guys is. And they both won national championships at LSU, the same as Nick Saban, another outsider from West Virginia who, like Kelly, coached in the upper Midwest (Michigan State) and never truly connected to the culture or people there except when he was accepting shiny trophies.

So good fit or bad fit, this new Midwesterner with New England roots was the best — if a stunning — hire for LSU since Scott Woodward couldn’t get Jimbo Fisher to reunite or Lincoln Riley to relocate. After all, Kelly abruptly left Notre Dame as the winningest coach ever at the truly only national school.

But Kelly knows if he doesn’t whip Alabama once in a while and beat up on Texas A&M and Florida regularly, he’ll be right back on the job market, his average salary of $9.5 million with a 10-year deal notwithstanding. Or he could just buy himself a boat and become a shrimp boat captain with a fractured accent or retire to one of his two Florida vacation homes.

As for that salary, LSU has reportedly guaranteed 90% of it and ridiculously included a $500,000 incentive bonus for reaching a bowl game. Uh, excuse me, but shouldn’t that be a half-a-mil rebate that Kelly must pay the school if he DOESN’T qualify for a bowl game?

For anyone asking why in the heck would he move South, know that Kelly was making only $2.7 million at Notre Dame.

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He also got bashed for the timing of his exit from South Bend as well, taking the LSU job just six days before the final CFP rankings that strongly considered but barely excluded the Irish by one rung. It’s hard to believe LSU wouldn’t have waited to seal the deal if they had a gentleman’s agreement. His hasty departure didn’t sit well with Notre Dame fans and ex-players.

Kelly wouldn’t have been subjected to more second-guessing if this avid golfer in his own right had announced he was joining the LIV Golf Tour.

When I asked Kelly at SEC media days about his fit in his new job, he said, “Fit is about the ability to run a program at the highest level. I’ve had success at Notre Dame, Cincinnati, Central Michigan, wherever I’ve been. Running a program and player development, those are the most important things. I don’t think that needs to be geographical.”

He’s exactly right. Besides, he’s won everywhere he’s been, from a pair of Division II national titles at Grand Valley State to a Mid-American championship at Central Michigan to a 34-6 record at Cincinnati.

In short, Kelly is everything his predecessor was not. Kelly, more aloof than extroverted, sports a prim-and-proper, polished look while the gregarious Orgeron came off as a rumpled suit. Kelly’s into organization and discipline and accountability while Ed O was a man of the people — aka a perfect fit for a long time — yet got distracted and complacent only to be pink-slipped just 21 months after winning a natty.

“They’ve got two very different styles,” Tigers wideout Jack Bech told me. “Coach O was a motivator who gets your blood pumping. Coach Kelly is more like a CEO. He’s very strategic and moves things around like chess pieces. Everyone’s accepted him.”

Kelly is very much a CEO along the lines of Mack Brown — incidentally two of the four winningest active college football coaches, along with Saban and Kirk Ferentz. Kelly’s attention to detail sets him apart; Ed O somehow let the program deteriorate into an 11-12 record the last two seasons.

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“Both are great coaches and know how to win,” LSU defensive end BJ Ojulari said. “Coach Kelly is very comfortable in the position. I saw him dance and do stuff like that, but I’m not the best dancer so it’s not for me to judge.”

Kelly is in Baton Rouge and not South Bend in 2022 for several reasons.

He had probably hit his ceiling at Notre Dame, good enough to reach the College Football Playoff but never good enough to get past an Alabama or an Ohio State or Clemson. The school has lost its last 10 BCS and/or CFP games and New Year’s Six bowls and hasn’t celebrated a title since 1988. Tougher academic standards won’t follow him south, where Kelly figures to do a better job locking down Louisiana talent at the same time he exploits recruiting hotbeds from Houston to Miami.

If the run-bound Miles and overmatched Orgeron can win a natty at LSU, surely Kelly can.

It’s easier to recruit blue-chip talent in the Southeast, where wide receivers and running backs (but maybe not quarterbacks) grow on trees or in the bayous, than it is in the upper Midwest, even for a global brand like the Irish have.

It doesn’t hurt that he gets 50 hours of private jet time, according to a Sports Illustrated story.

He probably tired of the daunting demands of Notre Dame fans (although he might be severely underestimating just how badly the Tiger Nation wants to win).

But back to fits.

That almost always is the most overrated criterion laid out for a new coaching hire, no matter the sport.

Take Texas, for instance.

The stiff shirt that was John Mackovic was a horrible fit in Austin, yet he won or shared a Southwest or Big 12 conference title three times in six years and won the very first Big 12 championship.

The personable David McWilliams, a Darrell Royal disciple and favorite son of Texas, was maybe the best fit ever in Austin but suffered three losing seasons in five years and finished tied for fifth in the league three times.

Both got fired.

Kelly might have been a logical fit in Austin, too, but Texas never considered him and instead wanted a close tie to the SEC, its new league, and settled on Alabama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian.

Is Jimbo Fisher the perfect match in College Station, even if the West Virginian does talk like a Yankee? Yes, I think he is.

Fisher likes to hunt and fish. He’s not shy about sparring with Saint Nick. He’s got much less pressure in College Station than he would ever have in Baton Rouge, where they fire national championship coaches.

Yeah, he could have traded in his $9 million a year deal with the Aggies for a salary approaching $13 million a season from Aggies pal Woodward. But Fisher didn’t recruit his butt off the past four years and come away with the best signing class ever with six five-star blue-chippers and have in place an NIL structure that will make Saban’s head explode only to shuck it all and go back to LSU. Smart man to stay where he is.

And Kelly might be a better coach than Fisher. Maybe. That’s to be determined, although Fisher has a national championship ring from Florida State, unlike Kelly. But Fisher has yet to win more than nine games in a season at A&M while Kelly has done so 17 times in 32 seasons.

Both have really rugged schedules. While they both must navigate murderous SEC slates, Fisher has to contend with Miami this season and Kelly opens with tradition-rich Florida State.

Fisher has already fit in well in College Station.

“Understand now, I have a Boston, Midwestern, Louisiana accent now,” Kelly said. “It’s three dialects into one. It’s no longer ‘family,’ I’ve got all kinds of stuff to throw at you.”

Kelly did say something very curious when he said he wanted “to be part of restoring championship-quality football to LSU.”

It’s primed for a big and quick rebound.

“That man is a winner,” said LSU linebacker Mike Jones, a transfer from Clemson a year ago. “When I think about where I see LSU in the next five, 10 years, I don’t think they could have hired anybody better to bring a top-tier program like LSU should be, can be and will be.”

LSU returns only 11 starters and has been picked to finish fifth in the SEC West. It doesn’t have a clear-cut starting quarterback since Max Johnson left for A&M.

But here’s betting Kelly wins big.

“I’ve gotten to love where I’m at in Baton Rouge,” he said. “I love the people, and they love football. They love family, and they love food, and that fits me really well. I guess I should have been in the South all along.”

We’ll see. But it wasn’t love at first gumbo.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Brian Kelly is out to make LSU more fit to win championships