Why did Brian Kelly fail at LSU? It never made sense to hire him there.

Brian Kelly was hired to answer a question college football has stopped asking, and one LSU never needed to consider.

For the better part of two decades, the entire industry was forced to reckon with Nick Saban. When Kelly came to Baton Rouge in November 2021, the hiring calculus of every would-be contender centered around Saban: Would you take one of his acolytes? That could yield a gem such as Kirby Smart, Saban’s former defensive coordinator at Alabama who left to create a two-time national champion at Georgia. But the Saban tree yielded busts more often than not (Florida’s Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Billy Napier, for example, plus Tennessee’s Derek Dooley and Jeremy Pruitt).

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