Your Honor,
We are called here today due to a dispute between LSU and its former football coach, Brian Kelly. At stake is a $54 million buyout, which is the amount owed to Mr. Kelly based on his contract if the school decided he didn’t win enough football games.
Our client, Mr. Kelly, is a 64-year-old longtime coach who is admittedly not the most beloved coach in college football. OK, maybe thats underselling it. Not a lot of people like the guy. And while we appreciate LSU turning him into a sympathetic figure, we come before you today because we cannot allow the university to stiff him.
Four years ago, LSU offered Mr. Kelly a 10-year, $95 million contract. Even though it was a stupid business deal at the time, and looked worse almost immediately when he did that whole fake accent thing while addressing the crowd at a basketball game and then an entire summer of cringeworthy hype recruiting videos where he looks like someone who should get thrown out of a nightclub, nobody put a gun to LSUs head.
They willingly offered him all that money. Whoops!
Now, according to a legal filing that was first made public Monday night by ESPN, Mr. Kelly claims that LSU now says he had not been formally fired on Oct. 26 when they, um, fired him. Instead, according to Mr. Kellys petition, LSU has told his representatives the school is only now getting around to firing him. And now theyre doing it now for cause, which means the school doesnt think it should pay the buyout.
AWK-WARD.
Now here in the real world, we know exactly whats happening, Your Honor.
LSU doesnt want to pay for its mistake and is subsequently trying to concoct a legal strategy that will force Mr. Kelly into a negotiating position where he accepts considerably less than $54 million to make all of this go away.
It would be funny if it werent so pathetic and unoriginal. Other schools have tried this strategy before, ginning up NCAA violations or threatening the release of other embarrassing information, hoping the coach would rather settle than go through a full-blown lawsuit based around vague wording in a contract.
LSU is probably trying to do the same thing, given that Mr. Kelly could be fired for cause by engaging in serious misconduct that undermines the mission of LSU or constitutes moral turpitude.
What does that really mean?
Good question. And it wouldnt be surprising if LSU believes it has something on Mr. Kelly so embarrassing or damaging to his reputation that it feels empowered to exert maximum leverage.
Unfortunately for LSU, though, most of the world including agents and potential candidates to become the next LSU coach will think theyre a bunch of buffoons for trying to run this play. And they wouldnt be wrong. Much like a goal-line fade, theres got to be a better way to do this.
But rather than hurling personal insults, lets stick to the facts.
If LSU is going to contend that Mr. Kelly was not really fired until now, and that Scott Woodward, the university’s now fired athletic director, was not authorized to fire him or negotiate the terms of his exit, we submit the following pieces of evidence into the record.
Exhibit A: On Oct. 26, the day after a 49-25 loss at home to Texas A&M, Kelly met with athletic director Scott Woodward and was fired.
Exhibit B: A few days later, after Woodward was fired and replaced on an acting basis by Verge Ausberry, LSU held a press conference in which Ausberry said, I went down there on that field and saw something empty seats, empty suites, our stadium, Tiger Stadium, halfway empty. Its not a good thing. We have to win, we have to be successful. LSU has to be in the playoffs every year in football.
And finally, Exhibit C: The governor of the state, Jeff Landry, had his own press conference in which he said, It had gotten to the point, and I think they realized that, that the spirit of the team needed a change and so that change was made and were going to move on.
Only a goldfish would look at that sequence of events and see some type of mystery about what happened here, Your Honor.
Exhibit A should be enough on its own after all, if Mr. Kelly wasnt really fired, why was Frank Wilson the head coach last weekend for the Alabama game but the mountain of public comments from school officials do not leave any room for misinterpretation. And furthermore, if there were a legitimate reason to fire Mr. Kelly for cause, isnt it a coincidence that it only comes up after the fact and after three losses in four games for a team that was supposed to be in the College Football Playoff?
Mr. Kelly was fired because he didnt win enough football games, full stop, and pretending theres some shadowy reason that will make the buyout go away is a frivolous abuse of the legal system and a waste of everyone’s time.
Its just business? No, its insanity.
Now, one could argue the entire idea of firing a coach for cause needs a refresh. After all, if your job is to win games, losing seems like a legitimate cause to end the employment. But thats going to require schools to change how they write these contracts, making them shorter and with more upfront money. In 2025, when you see how quickly schools churn through coaches, theres no reason to give anyone more than a four-year contract.
Maybe thats how the world will look in the future, but its not where college football is at right now. LSU gave Kelly a 10-year deal, got burned and should be forced to pay the full price of that mistake without these silly games and fake drama.
Mr. Kelly deserves not a penny less than the amount owed in his contract, and LSU is making a fool of itself trying to invent a rationale to get out of it.
Thank you for your time, Your Honor. The prosecution rests.