{"id":778186,"date":"2026-05-06T21:59:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/778186\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T21:59:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:59:14","slug":"brian-kelly-reveals-difference-in-pressure-between-notre-dame-lsu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/778186\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Kelly reveals difference in pressure between Notre Dame, LSU"},"content":{"rendered":"

For 15 years of his coaching career, Brian Kelly<\/a><\/strong> roamed the sidelines at two of the highest-profile programs in college football. He became the winningest coach in Notre Dame<\/a><\/strong> history while coaching the Fighting Irish from 2010-21 and spent more than three years as the head coach at LSU<\/a><\/strong> from 2022-25.<\/p>\n

The two jobs brought different types of pressure, though, Kelly told USA Today. He considered the work at Notre Dame to be a build back toward national relevance while at LSU, the goal was to win a national championship quickly.<\/p>\n

When Kelly took over at Notre Dame, the Irish were coming off a 6-6 season under Charlie Weis<\/strong>, which included four straight losses to end the year. The program had just two Top-15 finishes in the final AP poll since Lou Holtz\u2019s<\/strong> departure in 1996. That\u2019s why Kelly said his top goal was to restore Notre Dame to national prominence, which different from the immediate quest to win a title at LSU once he took over in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were different circumstances,\u201d Kelly told John Brice and Blake Toppmeyer<\/a>. \u201cIf you remember, when I took the Notre Dame job, they had just lost to [Stanford] and UConn. They had wooden bleachers, they had no scoreboard, they had no infrastructure. And I say that in due respect of the job there was going back to being relevant as a football program and building infrastructure, facilities. When I got on that campus, that\u2019s what I needed to do. When I got on the campus at LSU, it was [to] win the national championship right away. There were a lot of things. We had 36 scholarship players when I got there. So there was a lot more digging and a lot more work to get to that level.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t say after 3.5 years at Notre Dame, \u2018If you don\u2019t win the national championship, you\u2019re out.\u2019 Now, we played for it. We weren\u2019t ready to win one, as we all know. But they were different. \u2026 They have different perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brian Kelly \u2018proud of the work\u2019 done at Notre Dame<\/p>\n

All told, Brian Kelly amassed a 113-40 overall record during his time at Notre Dame, which moved him past Knute Rockne<\/strong> for the most wins in program history. However, 21 of those wins were vacated by the NCAA after an investigation. The Fighting Irish appeared in the national championship in 2012 \u2013 Kelly\u2019s third season \u2013 and made two College Football Playoff appearances, as well.<\/p>\n

Kelly said he\u2019s \u201cproud\u201d of the work at Notre Dame to put the Irish back in the national spotlight. Now, Marcus Freeman<\/a><\/strong> is continuing to build it and took the Irish to the national title game in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cNotre Dame was more about building it and a consistent winner and becoming relevant again,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cNow, Marcus is taking that and moving it to another level. That\u2019s how you do this in the world and Fortune 500 companies. Each one has a different time and place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proud of the work that we did at Notre Dame. I\u2019m proud of the time. We raised our family there. We loved it. But it was time to move on and the next challenge was the LSU challenge. That, in 3.5 years, was too much to get to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 15 years of his coaching career, Brian Kelly roamed the sidelines at two of the highest-profile programs…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":778187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[107111,1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-778186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-brian-kelly-79-st-johns-preparatory-school","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-ncaafootball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116529880686422666","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}