Reveille

When Brian Kelly entered Tiger Stadium on a gilded chariot, the triumphant coach at one of the epicenters of football history, he now finds himself… where does he find himself? I’ve walked or driven past his million-dollar home on the lake many times, pondering the judgement in choosing a house that size when the title of coach is so often fleeting.

I remember when he purchased the property, and it was framed as a major recruiting move. A nice space to entertain the stars.

Recruiting. The foundation of a college football program. Every single aspect of the program stems from that element.

Kelly was brought in to be the executive guru, the calculating strategist who could put together a top-notch staff and maneuver the transfer portal. Stars, stars, stars. A 5-star recruit from California, 5-star from Kentucky, with functionally limitless coffers — the entire nation was to be our oyster.

Yet, the Kelly era will be remembered by its fundamental laziness. Watch any game, and it’s right there on the field. The players are giving it their all, but when you’re executing your 10th run up the middle on third-and-10, there’s only so much you can do.

Laziness. In the cutthroat world of power conference football, you can’t afford to be complacent. You can’t afford to take a bye week off to relax. Every minute of every day, some coach or coordinator in the South is staying up through the night, plotting every way to orchestrate your demise.

Laziness. Watch as we run it up the middle again.

I was a Kelly sympathizer for a long time. SEC fanbases are brutal. Our love is as fleeting as the seconds on the play clock.

I thought the hokey accent was silly, a bit of an overdone joke, but no harm, no foul. I don’t need my football coach to taste a ceremonial gumbo or play “Tiger Rag” for them to earn my respect. They just need to win — and wear our colors while doing it.

I was willing to give him some time, too. The rose-tinted glint of 2019 and that gravelly Cajun French charm tends to obscure just how demolished the program was at the end of the Ed Orgeron years.

Demolished. How do you define demolished? Nobody will contest that the program was in the dirt, having lost back-to-back games against its most hated rivals. Yet, there were still plenty of absolutely fun games.

The double upsets against ranked Florida and a sweet home win against the Aggies come to mind. Things were bad, yes, but you still had to tune in, you still had to fill the student section and stay the whole game.

Coach O was an objectively bad coach at the end. However, you still had the sense that the games truly mattered to him, that LSU beating Ole Miss holds a greater significance than the material value in the standings.

“Kellyball” is passionless. Run it up the middle. Throw a simple pass across to the receiver you’d expect. The team should do the absolute minimum needed to win and nothing more.

Even in the years we had electric athletes like Jayden Daniels and Malik Nabers, the whole season existed in the shadow that LSU was simply perpetually deficient. One element of our team was always MIA.

Oh, our special teams are bad? We can fix that next year. Now our defense is bad? We can fix that next year.

And here we are, years after next year was supposed to have come, and we are listless.

Thus, the games become chores. The line between loss and win becomes somewhat hazy. When you put up 20 points, whether you win or lose, the product remains a constant. Coach O failed, but he failed spectacularly, so when he notched an upset, the stadium still shook.

They hand out Oscars for the best films, and Razzies for the worst, but nobody gives an award to the purely competent ones. Those end up on the Hallmark Channel.

However, a part of me will hold onto some bit of fondness for the Kelly era. The great memes, the temper tantrums — it all made for great entertainment when the games were over.

Furthermore, uniting around the universal hatred of Kelly has been an easy way to bond with new people. I may not know your music taste, or your favorite show, or your major, but there’s a good chance we can connect over how much that game last weekend sucked.

I could have a million more words to write about Kelly and what he has done to the program I love. However, I think Nabers put it best. In a now-deleted Instagram story, he simply shared a video of a guy kicking rocks.

Gordon Crawford is a 19-year-old political science major from Gonzales, La.