Bussin' With The Boys - Coach Brian Kelly Talks Why He Left Notre Dame For LSU, Adapting To The LSU Culture + NFL Plans?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey guys, it's us The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it.

Starting point is 00:00:10 We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it. But, you know, tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

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Starting point is 00:01:17 Freedom for Vietnam! There's a fire coming to this country, and it's going to burn out everything. Listen to Saigon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Bus with the Boy Spring Tour. We are sitting here with Coach Kelly, Coach Electrostack to have you on, but first I must read this ad from Chevrolet. Chevrolet is a trusted company that has been innovating for the past 100 years. Up to now, most electric vehicles have either too expensive, too small, or too limited in capabilities for most people.

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Starting point is 00:02:08 I have an EVs. I have an EVs. I have an EV. I don't know if I'm green, but these EVs, man, they can move. They get into out of traffic. Yeah. There's no question. What a way.

Starting point is 00:02:17 What a pleasure is that. It is. To have you on the podcast. Appreciate it. It's been awesome. Your staff, everyone, we've been talking about it, super accommodating. Well, they're scared. to you guys.

Starting point is 00:02:27 They're really a whole other schools might not be then. If that's how it works. If all the places as far as accommodation goes, I would give number one in Nebraska because I don't know what it is. This year, we went to places we've known. Nebraska, Michigan, we went to Tennessee because they're in the backyard. We've gotten to know South Carolina a little bit, but this year we kind of like stepped out and tried going to new schools and everything like that.

Starting point is 00:02:51 But your guys is like the accommodation, how the hospitality here is the hospitality, if we didn't do it that way, listen, we'd be thrown out of the South. Yes, no question. I agree. Louisiana isn't really like, Louisiana is its own entity.

Starting point is 00:03:05 Like, there's the South and there's Florida and Louisiana. It's a own country. Yeah. No doubt. What was the experience like getting acclimated here being in Notre Dame for so long? Well, it was definitely a change. But it was, it was a great change for me in a sense of, you know, you're in,

Starting point is 00:03:19 you know, you're in the Midwest. You know, it's certainly, Notre Dame was a great experience, but this is so much different relative to the day-to-day. As you can see, I'm a lot more relaxed. I don't have my tie on today. It's just a relaxed, comfortable environment, and, you know, it's about people, it's about food, it's about football. And at the time in my career, this was just a great stop for me, and it's been really enjoyable. What you've been at Cincinnati, Notre Dame, now LSU as a head coach, what stuck out about this job that made you leave Notre Dame in the middle of

Starting point is 00:04:02 playoff implications? Obviously, when you left, that was a monster story. Can you kind of talk about that a little bit? Well, I think that's overblown a little bit. We weren't right in the middle of it. We kind of knew where we were going to be in terms of that. But that's neither here nor there. I think what's most important was LSU and leadership, Scott Woodward.

Starting point is 00:04:22 I've known Scott for quite some time, familiar with him, certainly wanting to be in the SEC. Tough to hear. Look. That's big ten guys, tough to hear. I know. But look, I mean, you're talking about each and every week, you know, playing against, you know, Sabin and smart and, you know, the great teams in this conference. I wanted to be measured by the best. and coming down here and playing against him.

Starting point is 00:04:52 I had never done that. And so, you know, it was one of those opportunities for me that allowed me to come to a university that had slipped from its standards, you know, having won a national championship in 19. So the opportunity was there. And then getting a chance to, you know, be with the right people. Well, made it the most difficult leaving Notre Dame

Starting point is 00:05:17 after building such a... Oh, the players. You're there for so long, too. It's the players. You know, it's always about, you know, the relationships that you have with players. And that's always the most difficult. Because, look, you never leave on your terms.

Starting point is 00:05:30 It's always somebody else that dictates the timeline. I don't dictate the timeline. It's the other school. It's the other university that dictates timeline. So you never get to say, I'm leaving when I want to leave. And so that's what makes it difficult. And every stop along the way that I've,

Starting point is 00:05:47 left, it's never been a great time. But if you're making that decision to leave, the most difficult is the relationships that you have with your players. Talk about the development of football in high school in the South, because it seems like programs like Alabama, programs like LSU, you guys just have an immaculate amount of talent always.

Starting point is 00:06:09 Like, what are they feeding them? What's going on? Lack of distractions. Yeah. Right? You know, they're not sitting in front of, of PlayStation. You know, there's not a lot of other things that take them away from field sports. They're outside playing for the most part.

Starting point is 00:06:29 And, you know, whether it's being involved in football or track and field or, you know, training, they're involved in this game. And it's something that, you know, they can do year round. The weather obviously has a lot to do with it. ability to play spring football. All of those things, although they seem small, when you add them all up, each one of them contributes to really good high school football, really good feeder systems relative to, you know, colleges that are down here.

Starting point is 00:07:03 And in particular, kids grow up wanting to play at the flagship school. And there's not a lot of state universities that have that, right? maybe Ohio State and LSU benefit the most from in-state where I want to go play for the Buckeyes. I want to go play for the Tigers. And because of that, it makes for really good recruiting. You do feel it walking around. Like when we were walking around and seeing Mike the Tiger and then kind of walking around the basketball arena and everything else, like you just feel everybody walking around.

Starting point is 00:07:35 Kids are on field trips. Like it just feels like people live for sports at LSU. No doubt. And look, I mean, and it couldn't. probably come together any better, right? Our baseball team's number one in the country. You know, they had 14,000. You know, our women's basketball, you know,

Starting point is 00:07:51 certainly softball, track and fields one and two. I mean, it is about not just one sport here. It's all of those sports are looking to win championships. And you can feel it. And look, the bar is high, you know. And because of that, I think it brings everybody up when it comes to, you know, the expectations. Obviously keeping the players in Louisiana,

Starting point is 00:08:18 everybody from Louisiana wants to be here. When you go to these other states like these California, Texas, these other big-time states for recruiting, how is it adjusting to, like, the culture down here for those guys that maybe come from the West Coast or different parts of the country? Yeah, you know, I don't know that it, so I'll even take myself, right? People talked, you know, probably for the first two weeks when I took the job, how is he going to adapt to the culture?

Starting point is 00:08:43 How is it going to adapt? So what is culture? Culture is standards, you know, a way of life. And to me, what you had to adapt to here was simply the weather. You know, the foods, I love the food. I'm originally from Massachusetts. I grew up on Cape Cod. I love seafood, right?

Starting point is 00:09:03 I didn't get much of that in the Midwest. So here it was great to get back to that kind of seafood. But it's really weather. because people are friendly, and they love football. So if you like that, there's not a big change relative to that. It's really just about, you know, being comfortable with the standards. And the standards are about excellence. And I think that that's an easy one for me.

Starting point is 00:09:34 Having a little fun and talking about getting acclimated to the culture in that first couple of weeks. Again, having fun. in those first couple weeks you went to a basketball game, the accent is family, how much fun did everybody in the building have surrounding that? And did you try to fake an accent to say family? No, I mean, who would, like,

Starting point is 00:09:52 that's the stupidest thing that try to do? I think I would try to do that. I would try to do it every single day. When you have a Boston accent, and you're in the Midwest, and then you go down south, you're going to be all messed up anyway. And I think I have a bit of a,

Starting point is 00:10:10 a strange accent anyway. So add another one, I think it's crazy anyway. So you're claiming it rerouted the system a little bit. You're thrown off, meeting a lot of people from the South and you might have caught a couple things and decided that. Maybe a little nervous.

Starting point is 00:10:24 You just, you know, you want to do it too. We get around people in Nashville. They start talking Southern to me. I started getting it. And you start hearing family. Yeah. I mean, it's almost like that's natural. That's how you say it.

Starting point is 00:10:35 Yeah. And I'm just trying to be like everybody else. Yeah. And then throw your boss. that accent in there too. And heck, I couldn't tell you what's coming out of my mouth. A little Boston Cajun. Yeah, I like that.

Starting point is 00:10:47 Yeah, yeah. You've had so much success as a head coach. I remember 2012, there's a lot of talk and speculation about you leaving Notre Dame and going to the NFL and you decided not to do that. What came into that decision-making of wanting to stay in the college football?

Starting point is 00:11:04 Yeah, I think it was the decentralization of the program. game where, you know, I've been used to my whole life, like the old kind of Bill Parcell's quote, you know, shop for the groceries and cook the meal. You know, you don't do that in the NFL, especially, you know, the time that I would have been going. I would have been not handling the roster. I would not have been the GM. I would have been simply the football coach. And I've been used to handling the scholarships and making final decisions on, you know, who was getting

Starting point is 00:11:40 the final, say, relative to anything that happened in the program. And when you go to the NFL, you lose a lot of that control. And not that I'm a control freak as much as I just felt like I had all of those things at Notre Dame, and I was going to give all that up. And I just wasn't ready to do that. Do you think there's ever a time you see yourself becoming an NFL head coach? No. I'm in. I'm all in. Yeah, this is it. I love what I do. Because I've found the, if that's a word, the relationships with the players. And I enjoy that too much.

Starting point is 00:12:19 And, you know, not being a play caller anymore. I'm not in meetings. I don't have to sit in those long meetings. So I can be downstairs. I can be in the training room. I can eat with the guys. And it just allows you that opportunity to be with the players more. does that scalability look like? Because you could be a head coach who's very invested in offense or defense or everything else. And when you've kind of scaled yourself to surround yourself with these minds around you, like what does that look like? Fix football. I mean, fix the issues that the coordinators need help with. I've been on both sides of the ball. I've been a coordinator on offense and defensive call plays on both sides of the ball. So I think just being available to fix any issues that we might have, be available for those guys. We meet

Starting point is 00:13:02 every day, you know, with the coordinators. So for me, if there are any particular issues that crop up, be a sounding ward, be there with, hey, experience. This is my 32nd year of being a head coach and maybe just lend a little bit of that experience to those guys and help them along the way. When you were first kind of going through that transition too was a hard kind of like letting go. I'm being a coordinator and be like, all right, let me just trust him and not. Let me bite my tongue here. Yeah, it's got to be tough. Yeah, I don't know that the trust was the issue. it was finding the right outlets. In other words, you know, where can I find myself during the day doing the things that I was used to doing, scripting? And, you know, I got seven on seven that do. I've got to script these, you know, plays and team. And so, you know, really filling in those voids and it really was filled in with what my why is. And that is spending more time in the training room, you know, spending more time, you know, with the players. support staff, making sure that we've got the right things in place for our players in terms of

Starting point is 00:14:06 recovery. And so that was trying to find that niche early on and where that void would be filled was the hardest part. When these guys from high school are coming into college, what are the pillars that you stand on as far as your program goes and how do you implement that on guys that are 17, 18 years old, especially the early enrollee guys? Yeah, consistency and approach in terms of the day to day in terms of, you know, look, this is about graduating our players and playing for championships. How do we get you there? And really working on what are those things that will help you, like attention to detail, you know, having good habits, being reliable. You've been in an NFL locker room. I mean, what does everybody want? Just be on time. Be a good teammate.

Starting point is 00:14:57 You know, those are standards that are not that hard, and sometimes we make it harder than it is. So really just giving them the basic principles of, you know, good values on a day-to-day basis and being consistent with it and making sure that we apply those every single day. And those are really the most important. I know we have to let you go here soon because you're about to go to a sports science media.

Starting point is 00:15:21 And that's what I want to ask you about, like, how do you implement the sports science? because when we were talking about before the podcast, we're talking about how it's misunderstood and everything else. How do you use sports science as a tool and not the end-all be-all? Some people can kind of mis-consure or look into it too much. Yeah, so my job is to put together in this building a high-performance team for our student athletes, right? And so that high-performance team touches our student athletes from, you know,

Starting point is 00:15:47 mental performance training to nutrition to strength and conditioning, to understanding what their sleep patterns are with aura. And so all of that touches them, but we want it to be collaborative, right? We want them all working together, not separately. So sports science is that delivery system for human performance. And sometimes they're all working in separate areas, and they don't want to share their work.

Starting point is 00:16:12 And so just getting them under one umbrella and making sure that they're working together cohesively. And I think that that's a competitive advantage. And if you're able to do that and deliver it the right way, I think those are things that you can do to be just a step ahead. I love that. Coach, we appreciate your time. Thanks. Amazing facility. Everything is top-notch. Appreciate it. Seriously. Great to spend some time with you guys. We look forward to seeing it in the fall. Yes, sir. We would love to come to a night game. You always. We would love to come to a night game.

Starting point is 00:16:43 It lives up to the hype. I'm going to tell. We can tell. We can tell. Just let you know. We're in. You made a big mistake. Offering that. Thanks, guys. Hey guys, it's us The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it.

Starting point is 00:17:06 We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it. But, you know, tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends.

Starting point is 00:17:30 Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Starting point is 00:17:53 Why are we all so obsessed with romance? On the Radio 831 podcast, join us, Sanjana Basker and Tyler McCall, as we unpack all the trending tropes, fuzzy adaptations, book talk drama, and celebrity love stories with hot takes and sharp guests. Each episode digs into what these stories reveal about desire, fantasy, identity, and how we love now. Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Bussin' With The Boys - Coach Brian Kelly Talks Why He Left Notre Dame For LSU, Adapting To The LSU Culture + NFL Plans?

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