Brian Kelly is the new head coach at LSU, having left Notre Dame after the 2021 season to take over for Ed Orgeron in Baton Rouge.

However, the end of Kelly’s tenure in South Bend wasn’t without some controversy. When he left Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish were still waiting to see if they would be included in the College Football Playoff field. They weren’t, but the timing struck some as being a bad look for Kelly.

In a lengthy profile by Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated, Kelly spoke about the timing of his decision, saying LSU controlled things, not him:

“Everybody is like, ‘How can you leave your team?!’ LSU controlled the timeline,” he says. “It wasn’t the Brian Kelly timeline. The Brian Kelly timeline would have been, ‘Hey, can you wait for me? Hold the job open? Because I’d like to hang around Notre Dame until we know what’s going on [with the rankings].’’’

Of course, Notre Dame finished outside of the top 4 in the final CFP rankings this past season, but it would have been really strange if a team in the Playoff was playing without its head coach.

To read Dellenger’s full profile of Kelly, click here.