...help me with some background info here.
If I listened to major media, I'd believe that Kelly jumped south because he thinks he can win a championship in BR, and that he can get recruits at LSU that he couldn't at ND.
So I looked up recruiting for the past decade on the 247 composite, and that doesn't seem to lend much support. LSU has generally finished ahead of ND in the composite rankings, but ND is almost always in the Top Ten, I believe falling out of that range only once, and even then I think it was still top 15. That's not a material difference in terms of raw talent.
But he still wasn't contending for championships there, and I read he only had 2 wins against top 10 ranked teams in 9 years there. Talent doesn't seem to be the problem, and schedule certainly wasn't. Doesn't seem to fit the narrative that he can do better at LSU due to more access to talent, particularly when the SEC west schedule typically stands to be rated tougher than the average ND schedule.
I ask all this because there was a lot to like about his first season in Baton Rouge, but also a couple of games where it seemed like he and his staff must've been playing cards all week. No plan to speak of, and some truly head-scratching in-game decisions. Some LSU fans have told me that's been a knock on Kelly, a couple games every year that are poorly coached and have a WTF? feel.
I haven't had much time to pay attention to the Domers in the Kelly era, so if anybody here has thoughts about him, I'm interested to hear them. Going solely by this season I feel far better about him than Orgeron, but if he routinely drops games he "shouldn't" then we're kind of right back at the tail end of the Les Miles era, which was supposed to be unacceptable and still didn't carry this price tag.