re: Seems like the players thought we had him too

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So we clearly didn't offer him enough. The money should've never been close between us and ND (who is known for not paying well I.E. Kelly only makes 1.8M a year)

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1. Brian Kelly is not making only $1.8 mill a year. That might be the only amount acknowledged publicly, but he's ABSOLUTELY making much more. Use your brain. Do you really think a HC at a school with a very rich alumni base and very rich football tradition, and one who has taken his team to BCSCG/playoffs 3 times in 10 years is making only half as much as the HC at Washington St.? Kelly would have been LONG gone if that were the case.

2. I doubt money was the issue for LSU. He and his family are from the midwest. That probably had a lot to do with it. But here is the inconvenient truth some O sycophants don't want to acknowledge. He's fired ALL three of his "biggest" hires: Canada, Pelini, Linehan after one season...doing damage to their career trajectory in the process (Aranda and Ensminger were already on staff and Brady was a complete unknown). On the flip side, ND's DC just got a HC job. Certainly, those quick firings were justified. But coaches probably don't look at it the same way fans do. They look at is as "that could be me if I go over there."

Certainly a guy who wants to be a HC can leverage success at LSU into a HC job. Probably even a bigger gig than he could leverage out of ND. But I suspect ND convinced him that LSU was an "unreasonable" risk as past history shows if he didn't produce big in ONE season he was going to get canned....killing his upward trajectory. Now, that may or may not have been true (though past history suggest it was very possible.) ND likely made the money close and sold him on stability.