Brian Kelly Out at LSU: What Went Wrong + Not Enough Coaches
The Audible with Stew, Bruce & Ralph: A show about college football
The Athletic
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brian Kelly is out at LSU after just four seasons, with the Tigers set to pay out up to $54 million. Bruce breaks down the Sunday drama that led to Kelly's firing after the blowout loss to Texas A&M, including the power struggle with AD Scott Woodward over staff changes. Ralph explains how the awkward mix of "Kelly's guys" and "Woodward's guys" created underlying dysfunction, and why the cultural fit was doomed from the start. Plus, the crew debates Kelly's next move: what are the odds he’s coaching again next year?
So many schools are looking for a new coach to turn it around, but there are no "sure thing" hires available. Lane Kiffin, Jon Sumrall, Willie Fritz, and Bob Chesney all have their pros and cons. Plus, the guys discuss the impossible expectations at these blue blood programs and make their picks for Vandy at Texas, Cincinnati at Utah, Oklahoma at Tennessee, and USC at Nebraska.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Next season, percent chance Brian Kelly is coaching somewhere again versus percent chance. |
| 0:07.5 | He's a television analyst, and you can throw in like option C if you want to. |
| 0:15.0 | Welcome to the Audible presented by Trader Joe's. I'm Stuart Mandel, joined as always by Bruce Feldman |
| 0:26.2 | and Ralph Rousseau on our Tuesday morning edition. Guys, we may have to start delaying that Sunday |
| 0:33.1 | podcast every week now. We talk about somebody's job being in jeopardy and then they get fired after |
| 0:38.9 | we've already recorded the episode. This week, of course, it was Brian Kelly. So we are going to get |
| 0:43.5 | into LSU and what went wrong there. Some more coaching carousel stuff because there's so many jobs |
| 0:51.1 | open in general. And the idea of, is there such a thing as a sure thing with coaches? |
| 0:58.1 | And of course, our picks and our upset specials for next week. |
| 1:03.0 | Since this happened on Sunday, guys, you've been, you and Bruce and Ralph, |
| 1:07.4 | you and have been specifically, the two of you, doing a lot of reporting on what went down. |
| 1:13.0 | Let me start with you, Bruce. |
| 1:15.7 | What the heck happened Sunday? |
| 1:17.9 | Yeah, not long after I got off our podcast, I got a text from somebody saying that Joe Sloan, the offense coordinator at LSU, was going to get fired. |
| 1:28.4 | And then it was like, is it happened yet? |
| 1:30.9 | And it hadn't. |
| 1:32.1 | And it was kind of in limbo. |
| 1:33.6 | And then all of a sudden, |
| 1:34.3 | when I talked to a few more people inside the LSU football building, |
| 1:38.9 | it had become, well, now there's something more complicated |
| 1:42.2 | as it relates to Brian Kelly, because there was a little |
| 1:45.4 | bit of back and forth between him and the AD who had hired him, Scott Woodward. It started to get |
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