Notre Dame finds its way to the playoff doorstep, while Brian Kelly’s LSU hits rock bottom

When Brian Kelly left Notre Dame for LSU after the 2021 season, the coach said he felt he and the Fighting Irish were on different paths.

Nearly three seasons later, those diverging paths have Notre Dame on the doorstep of the College Football Playoff, and Kelly and LSU are spiraling.

The contrast between Kelly’s former program and his current situation was never more stark than in Week 12. Notre Dame improved to 9-1 with its eighth straight win, crushing Virginia in a 35-14 rout more lopsided than the final score suggests.

Quarterback Riley Leonard threw two of his three touchdown passes to Jayden Harrison and Mitchell Evans, fitting the Senior Day celebration perfectly during the Irish’s home regular-season finale.

The win further pushes a struggling Irish side already poised to qualify for the play-offs, reflected in its No.8 ranking in the November 12 committee poll.

Around the same time Notre Dame was putting the finishing touches on its eighth straight win, LSU was on its way to its third straight loss. And it wasn’t just that the Tigers fell to Florida, 27-16, a loss that ranks as the worst of Kelly’s tenure at LSU.

His sideline shouting matches with receivers Chris Hilton Jr. and Kyren Lacy gave the impression of a season that quickly spiraled out of control.

“Our inability to score touchdowns and points continues to show,” Kelly said after the gameLSU’s second straight failure to reach 20 points. “As coaches we have to take responsibility. Players have to own their end of it.”

“Our team has to make a decision on how to move forward,” he added.

Kelly’s demeanor on Saturday exuded far more frustration than despondency; despondency seems a more apt description of his post-game address following the 2021 Rose Bowl game.

In Notre Dame’s second College Football Playoff appearance of Kelly’s tenure — and the Fighting Irish’s third true pursuit of a national championship in the 11 years Kelly managed the Golden Domers — the team ran into a buzzsaw at Alabama.

The 31-14 loss was the most competitive of Notre Dame’s three national title flirtations in the Kelly years, coming after a 30-3 run against Clemson in the 2018 Cotton Bowl and the infamous 42-14 BCS Championship Game beatdown in 2013.

A dream third season that ended with a bang apparently left Kelly with a loss. He spent one more season in South Bend, but the end seemed inevitable after that Rose Bowl.

In the spring of 2022, when Kelly lamented that Notre Dame and he “didn’t seem to be on the same page,” he described his decision to transfer to LSU as the necessary step to win a national championship.

“I want to be in an environment where I have the resources to win a national championship,” Kelly said at the time. “And I came down here because I want to be in the American League East.”

Well, since the New York Yankees lost the most recent World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the AL East hasn’t won baseball’s top prize since 2018.

The college football landscape isn’t quite as drastically different as it was when the SEC monopolized seven straight national championships from 2006 to 2012 — the last of those consecutive titles coming at Kelly’s expense.

But with Michigan claiming the most recent championship, Oregon ranked No. 1 in 2024, and usual SEC juggernauts Alabama and Georgia showing rare vulnerability with two losses each, the road to the top may not have to cross the Southeast.

LSU now sits at 6-4. After falling to No. 22 in the latest playoff rankings, logic dictates that the Tigers will be out of the poll on Tuesday. Notre Dame, meanwhile, should climb, especially with No. 7 Tennessee losing at Georgia.

When Kelly lamented that he and Notre Dame weren’t on the same path, he may have been right — just not in the way he intended.