“My son plays for me!”: LSU HC Brian Kelly opens up on dealing with “social media” noise
How does coaching his son affect Brian Kelly? College football coaches face an immense amount of pressure, which often gets passed on to their families. No one is in a more unique position than Kelly about this. For his son, Kenzel Kelly, the pressure from and on his father is not just something that affects him tangentially, it's part of his day-to-day life as a linebacker at LSU.
This is something Brian Kelly knows full well as a coach and a father, and he opened up about it with Paul Finebaum on Wednesday's edition of the "Paul Finebaum Show":
"So when you get that kind of noise, you are trying to tell your team to avoid the noise. ... my family understands that, too. I just have to remind them a little bit more. ... Look, my son plays for me. He's hearing it, he's hearing what's on social media, and look, I tell him the same thing.
"You know who I am as a person. I'm your father, but I'm also your coach. You know what we do every day. The rest of that stuff ... you can't worry about it, just move on."
Finebaum seemed refreshed to hear such fatherly advice from a football coach, and he even went so far as to apologize for being harsh on Kelly during his Notre Dame years. Kelly said that he understood what Finebaum's job is and that criticisms are valid.
Brian Kelly on a potential SEC-Big Ten schedule alliance
During the same show, Brian Kelly showed support for the SEC to team up with the Big Ten and mix their schedules. This way, he argued, both conferences would benefit from playing top opposition week in and week out:
"Our first goal would be wanting to play Big Ten teams as coaches. I can speak for the room. We want to play Big Ten teams, but you've got to get a partner.
"You've got to get a partner who says we're in for that, too. So we've made our voice clear. Our athletic directors know that as well that we would like that. Our commissioner obviously heard us well. The rest will be up to what gets negotiated."
The SEC and the Big Ten have risen in the last few years to become the athletic and business giants of college football. The last two years saw two Big Ten schools win the national title (Michigan and Ohio State).
Before that, SEC schools ruled for 13 of the previous 17 seasons. The last non-SEC or Big Ten school to win a national title was Clemson in 2018.