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On November 28th, 2021, USC named Lincoln Riley its newest head coach. Two days later, LSU did the same with Brian Kelly. In a span of 72 hours, two of the purported best jobs in college football handed their reins to middle-aged coaches who were proven and unproven at the same time. Each coach had shown he could consistently reach the top ten. Each had yet to break through and win it all.
It was and it remains obvious why the men were hired. At the end of the 2021 season, Nick Saban was still college football’s actively reigning king, with Kirby Smart the clear silver medalist on the college football coaching podium. After those two, there wasn’t a clear third pick. Dabo Swinney had the track record, but Clemson was pretty clearly entering the wilderness. Luke Fickell and Dave Aranda were coming off of good seasons, but neither had done it for a long time. Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan had finally beaten Ohio State, but they looked as overmatched as Cincinnati in the College Football Playoff and they were a year removed from a 2–4 Covid campaign.
Riley and Kelly didn’t have any edge in playoff wins, but they’d consistently put their teams in the playoff picture, and there were no integral questions about their programs the way there were about Clemson and about Jimbo Fisher’s Texas A&M. USC and LSU could have taken bolder shots, trying to find the next king before his ascent. In hindsight, maybe they should have done that. What they did instead made a lot of sense. They found a mostly proven coach who was used to an intense spotlight, and they assumed their own resources would equip him with the talent necessary to fill the résumé gaps.
Two years in, both schools are still waiting for the breakthrough. Riley produced another Heisman winner and first overall pick, and he nearly got into the playoff with what would have been a historically bad playoff team. He didn’t reach that playoff, and the Trojans flopped the next year, and he’s now averaging a 9.5–4.0 mark in Los Angeles. Kelly also helped produce a Heisman winner, and he’s held his own in the SEC, but his average record isn’t much better at 10.0–3.5.
Those records aren’t bad at most schools. Honestly, a four-loss average might not be that bad at USC right now, which we’re increasingly learning is not as great a job as previously thought. The West Coast is turning away culturally from college sports, and there are few harder places for five-star recruits to lock in and focus than in Los Angeles, California. Riley’s problem is the same as it’s always been. He doesn’t know how to build an effective defense. He might have access to more NIL money at Southern Cal than he did in Norman, but USC is not a college football school like it was at the height of the Pete Carroll era. Oklahoma was and remains a college football school. That matters.
At LSU, 3.5 losses per year is bad, especially if sustained. It sounds ridiculous, and it is a little ridiculous, but there are a maximum of five or six other institutions which can foster national champion-caliber football like the good people in Baton Rouge. Georgia and Ohio State are the first two. The others—Alabama and Texas lead the pack —are either struggling massively right now (Florida) or presently come with existential questions. (Alabama’s question: Was it Tuscaloosa and Saban, or was it just Saban? Texas’s questions: Can Steve Sarkisian keep this program on track in a way Tom Herman couldn’t? What should we make of the Austin ecosystem based on these last 15 years?)
Basically, no one’s doubting that a good coach can win a championship at LSU. As plenty said on November 30th, 2021, the last LSU coach who didn’t win a national championship was Gerry DiNardo. He peaked at 10–2 in 1996 and was fired with a 3–7 record late in the 1999 season. Saban, Les Miles, and Ed Orgeron all won a national title. If Kelly doesn’t? If he can’t seriously compete for an SEC championship? That is a massive failure by the coach. It would make his better years at Notre Dame confusing. It would leave him an embarrassing answer to a Gerry DiNardo-style trivia question, or—worse still—the man under whom LSU turned into an also-ran. Kelly taking the LSU job was one of college football’s all-time mercenary moves. It was supposed to check off the national championship necessary for historic respect. The downside, we now realize, is that it could leave Kelly as the unwitting architect of a powerhouse’s demise.
Riley, then, has underwhelmed less than his opponent so far in their respective roles, at least given the context. Riley’s flaws are more obvious and more potentially fatal, but USC’s current ceiling, odd as it might sound, is probably lower than LSU’s. Its potential ceiling is through the roof—if Riley does find someone to build him an effective defense, USC should win a lot of games and bring a lot of boosters back with gusto—but at the moment, certain doors are locked in Los Angeles. The Trojans are only 15th in the current 247Sports Talent Composite. Combining the high school ranks and the transfer portal, they’re recruiting worse these days than Penn State, Notre Dame, and even Oklahoma. That, despite Riley’s presence providing offensive talents an NFL road paved in gold.
But while Kelly’s performance should be more frustrating for his fans, Kelly’s path to success is shorter and clearer. It could come as soon as this year, with Saban out of the picture in the SEC and neither Georgia nor Texas on the regular season schedule. The Tigers go to College Station and make this trip to Las Vegas, but the other major challenges on their schedule all come in Death Valley, where Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma will all visit. 13–0 is too much to ask, and 12–1 would be a little wild, but 11–2 is a reasonable thing for LSU fans to want from their coach ahead of playoff season. Even with a roster that’s historically untalented given the school it represents, LSU is favored or very close to favored right now in every regular season game it plays. Win tonight, and LSU might find itself favored to make the playoff by morning.
About that roster, though:
We mentioned how USC’s only 15th on the Talent Composite. LSU is ninth. That ninth is historically bad says a lot about LSU. That LSU is ninth says a lot about Brian Kelly. Kelly left Notre Dame because he thought he couldn’t win a national championship there. Notre Dame is fractions of a point behind LSU in that Talent Composite. LSU has more five-stars, but they only have five of those guys (Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State each have 14 or more). Notre Dame has eleven more four-star players than Kelly has in Baton Rouge. Notre Dame has the athletic depth LSU lacks. This is shocking, and it brings us to what might be that obvious and fatal Kelly flaw.
People don’t like the guy.
People really do not like Brian Kelly.
And in a sport where coaches have to recruit not only high schoolers and transfers but the boosters who pay those kids’ salaries, that is a bad, bad trait to have.
Brian Kelly’s always stunk at recruiting. Charlie Weis was more successful at it than his red-faced successor, and “charming” is not an adjective often used to describe Charlie Weis. At LSU, Kelly stinking at recruiting shouldn’t matter. Yet…it might? At the moment, the Tigers’ 2025 recruiting class is strong. But transfers play a big role these days, and Georgia and Texas have been suspiciously quiet in the world of high school prospects. If Brian Kelly doesn’t improve LSU’s talent soon, he’s going to make South Bend look like a whole lot less of a problem for Marcus Freeman.
That is how we get to where we find ourselves tonight. Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly, historically linked and mirror images of one another, each walking up to some green felt in Sin City looking to capitalize on what others have told them is the best hand they could want. Riley and Kelly, hired two days apart, each needing to cut the other badly in their hunt for a season that will reestablish themselves near the top of their profession. Riley has Miller Moss filling Caleb Williams’s shoes, but those shoes are large and the defensive situation is uncertain as ever. Kelly has Garrett Nussmeier and Joe Sloan backfilling Jayden Daniels and Mike Denbrock, but that’s more to replace than Williams alone, and LSU’s overall cast is not what we’re used to seeing from this program.
The potential is always massive with USC and LSU. With these two coaches, the floor should be very high. But those questions nag, and just as we expected from Miami/Florida and are now seeing with Billy Napier, the loser is going to take a lot of heat for four or five days once the final whistle sounds. It’s essential in college football to win your first big game of the year. It’s especially good to do that when the whole rest of the sport is rattling its cage, waiting for you to fail.
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We will have much more to say about Week 1 on Tuesday, when it’s complete, but some observations from yesterday’s games (with help from our model):
The biggest thing that changed in college football yesterday was perceptions of Miami. Cam Ward was within range of what had seemed to be outlandish expectations, and the Hurricanes—despite not looking especially crisp early—pummeled Florida in the Swamp. Some of what happened might be the wheels falling off for Napier, but that’s something to dive into more on Tuesday, as is the Miami hype itself. The short version? Our model still calls Florida State the best team in the ACC and Clemson the current conference favorite. We agree.
How can we call Clemson the ACC favorite? When, according to our model, they’re likelier to finish the season unranked than ranked? I hate to say this, but this is the ACC. The ACC is unlikely to produce an unranked conference champion, but the current conference favorite is likelier than not to finish unranked. The ACC occupies fraught territory. People expect a lot from its top three teams. Those three brands are all iconic. Those three teams are generally not living up to their past, and the bulk of the league is not very good.
Anyway, we’re not too worried by Clemson’s performance against Georgia. It was disappointing, yes, but one way to conceptualize expectations for Clemson going into yesterday is that there was a 1-in-4 chance they’d figured things out and a 3-in-4 chance they hadn’t. Turns out, the 3-in-4 chance hit. Cade Klubnik’s still struggling. The offense is still bad. Swinney still seems lost without Brent Venables. He might be a Jimbo Fisher in the making.
Also? Georgia is Georgia, and boy were they Georgia as the day progressed. Carson Beck is Georgia’s Trevor Lawrence, the quarterback worthy of the program. We may be experiencing Georgia’s peak this year.
More quietly, Alabama looked very good and Oregon had a weird day. Alabama fans should be giddy over that performance. It’s easy to make too much of one game, but I think we’ve all internalized that to the point where paradoxically, we don’t value 63–0 blowouts of Group of Five teams as much as we should. The talent was there and it looked sharp. Oregon fans can probably write yesterday off as an unfortunate lapse in focus against a good, tough FCS team. It’s a bad sign, but it’s not a death sentence.
Michigan didn’t look great offensively, but I’m not sure how much to make of that. Since we’ll get answers about Michigan six days from right now, I don’t think we need to pass too much judgment there.
Penn State is riding high after the nice win in Morgantown, and while it’s likeliest WVU is returning to seven-loss life after a good 2023, Penn State should be excited about the chance Andy Kotelnicki really is unlocking Drew Allar and his receiving corps.
Pivoting from Penn State, former Nittany Lions assistant Brent Pry might be in trouble in Blacksburg. Kyron Drones had a bad day. A bad, bad day. Good for Vanderbilt. For Virginia Tech…this time of broader conference uncertainty is not the right era in which to get stuck in the mud.
Oklahoma State had no trouble with South Dakota State, and sure, we might have overestimated South Dakota State, but I tend to think this is a great sign for OK State, especially with fellow Big 12 contender Arizona hardly playing an ounce of defense last night against New Mexico.
Finally…yes, that was a great win for Notre Dame. They didn’t really answer the core questions about this team, but they didn’t create additional ones, and their schedule is extraordinarily favorable this year. It’s hard to fault them—they scheduled Texas A&M on the road, they host Florida State and Louisville, and they’ll play USC in California—but one thing to track as we get used to the Power Four era is whether an ACC schedule is enough for the Irish to maintain national legitimacy in terms of the competition they face. They don’t necessarily need an SEC schedule, but they might need something more in line with what Big Ten teams face.
Again, plenty more on Tuesday, when we have all the results from the weekend to sift through and when I’ve had more of a chance to figure out what all happened. College Station was a great time. It’s a weird town, and the Aggies are definitely a weird sort, but they were exceedingly gracious, and Kyle Field is more special than I anticipated. It is tall. It is so, so tall.
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