Why did LSU fire Brian Kelly? What to know of football coach firing
A chaotic 2025 college football coaching carousel has claimed yet another high-profile victim.
One day after a 49-25 loss to Texas A&M , a game in which his team gave up 35 unanswered points in the second half, Brian Kelly was fired by LSU in the middle of his fourth season in Baton Rouge, the school announced Sunday night.
He becomes the 10th FBS coach to be fired since the start of the 2025 season and the seventh from a Power Four program.
“When Coach Kelly arrived at LSU four years ago, we had high hopes that he would lead us to multiple SEC and national championships during his time in Baton Rouge,” LSU athletic director Scott Woodward said in a news release. “Ultimately, the success at the level that LSU demands simply did not materialize, and I made the decision to make a change after last night’s game... We wish Coach Kelly and his family the very best in their future endeavors. We will continue to negotiate his separation and will work toward a path that is better for both parties.”
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The Tigers have been one of the bigger disappointments in the sport this season, with three losses in their past four games after being ranked as high as No. 4 in the US LBM Coaches Poll . At 5-3 overall and 2-3 SEC play, LSU is functionally eliminated from SEC championship contention and, barring an unexpected series of events, will likely be shut out of the College Football Playoff .
In the fourth year of a 10-year contract, Kelly's buyout is approximately $54 million. It's the second-largest buyout in FBS history, behind only the $76 million Texas A&M owed Jimbo Fisher when it fired him in 2023.
Associate head coach/running backs coach Frank Wilson will serve as interim head coach for the remainder of the season.
Kelly was one of the splashiest hires during an eventful 2021 coaching carousel, with LSU stunning much of the college football world by luring Kelly away from Notre Dame , where he became the school’s all-time winningest coach during his 12-year tenure.
Four years later, he’s out of a job. How, exactly, did it get to this point?
Here’s a closer look at why LSU fired Kelly:
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Why did LSU fire Brian Kelly?
It’s not often a football coach willingly leaves a program like Notre Dame — at least not for another college job — but after the 2021 season, Kelly did just that, leaving behind the Fighting Irish for LSU.
The prevailing belief at the time was that Kelly had reached his ceiling at Notre Dame, having been burdened by the school’s academic and admissions restrictions. At LSU, the thought went, he had more resources and access to a talent-rich state like Louisiana , putting him in a much more advantageous position to win a national title.
That rosy vision for what Kelly could accomplish in Baton Rouge never materialized, though.
Kelly went 34-14 in his four seasons with the Tigers, a slightly lower win percentage than what he posted at Notre Dame. That included a 19-10 mark in SEC play.
Kelly’s stint got off to an encouraging-enough start, with LSU enjoying a four-win improvement in 2022 that included a trip to the SEC championship game. The following year, the Tigers won 10 games for the second-consecutive season and quarterback Jayden Daniels became the school’s third-ever Heisman Trophy winner.
From there, though, LSU’s fortunes under Kelly started to dwindle.
In 2024, the Tigers went 9-4 and finished the season unranked. Expectations remained high for the 2025 season with quarterback Garrett Nussmeier and a number of key players returning, with a 4-0 start highlighted by a season-opening win on the road against what was a top-10 Clemson team seeming to justify that hype. Once SEC play kicked into high gear and ranked opponents started appearing more frequently on LSU’s schedule, losses began piling up.
Painful as they were, losses to Ole Miss and Vanderbilt came on the road against what are now top-15 teams. Against Texas A&M, though, the Tigers weren’t even able to hang on to what could have been, with the Aggies making halftime adjustments to beat up on LSU in the final 30 minutes, a stretch in which they outscored the Tigers 35-7 in Death Valley.
Eventually, Kelly’s shortcomings became too much to ignore.
He never lost fewer than three games in his four seasons at a program where each of his three full-time predecessors won a national title. Some of his defenses were porous, with his 2023 unit allowing 28 points per game (tied for 81st in FBS), effectively negating much of Daniels’ offensive wizardry that season. Even as that side of the ball has improved under second-year coordinator Blake Baker , the Tigers’ once-potent offense has languished, with LSU ranking 83rd among 136 FBS teams in scoring offense this season, at 25.5 points per game.
Those struggles came as Kelly was one of the highest-paid coaches in the sport. His total pay of $10.18 million ranks him eighth among FBS coaches, according to the latest USA TODAY coaches salary database .
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Brian Kelly record
Kelly went 34-14 in his four seasons at LSU, including a 19-10 mark in SEC regular-season play.
He had previously served as the head coach at Notre Dame, Cincinnati, Central Michigan and Division II Grand Valley State. Over that time, he has compiled a record of 318-11-2.
Here’s a year-by-year look at Kelly’s record at LSU:
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2022: 10-4 (6-2 SEC)
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2023: 10-3 (6-2)
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2024: 9-4 (5-3)
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2025: 5-3 (2-3)
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Brian Kelly fired, buyout: Why LSU fired its football coach
