Former LSU coach Brian Kelly reveals how AI is prepping him for next job
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Former LSU head coach Brian Kelly didn’t leave Baton Rouge triumphantly, which is why things ended in the first place during the 2025 season.
Kelly has won a lot of games in a lot of places, most notably at Notre Dame, but his dip into the murky waters of the SEC wasn’t a successful one, at least it wasn’t at LSU. He left with a 34-14 overall record after taking over in Baton Rouge in 2022, but Kelly also didn’t even make it through his fourth season, being fired last fall with games still to go.
The Kelly era was supposed to bring SEC and maybe even national title glory, but instead it ended prematurely and both sides are moving on. The 64-year-old Kelly is particularly moving on with a nuance that is quite notable. During a conversation on Tuesday with USA Today’s John Brice and Blake Toppmeyer, Kelly revealed that he’s going high-tech in preparation for whatever next coaching job comes his way.
“Every day, I’m trying to do my due diligence using Claude and AI, asking questions to build some of those answers that I think can be helpful for me as I get in front of an athletic director,” Kelly told USA Today.
With AI becoming more and more a part of the landscape of general life and, yes, creeping into college football, Kelly has made it his mission to use AI to help him prepare for that next challenge.
Kelly is in uncharted territory right now in more ways than one. He’s facing his first college football season not in the world of coaching since his first season at Grand Valley State way back in 1991. But Kelly also plans to be back in coaching very soon, and when that opportunity arises, he wants to be as prepared as possible.
That’s where his detour into the world of AI has come in.
LSU will be starting a new regime under Lane Kiffin this fall after Kelly’s firing last season, and the Tigers hope to immediately contend for an SEC title under Kiffin. Here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about the odds for LSU to do just that as the quest for conference supremacy begins anew in 2026:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
