This is an opinion column.
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Listening to Brian Kelly at SEC Media Days could make someone really miss former LSU football coach Ed Orgeron.
Not if you enjoy listening to fake Irish accents, though.
If phony Irish mutterings from an American college football coach are your thing, then SEC Media Days was the place to be on Monday.
The event is taking place at the Omni Hotel in downtown Dallas this week because Texas and Oklahoma are now members of the Southeastern Conference. If that doesn’t already sound a little odd, then just wait.
LSU had the microphones first and it didn’t take long for things to get weird.
Everyone remembers when Kelly was hired by LSU and he attempted a Southern accent. It was during the timeout of an LSU basketball game. Kelly, who is from Boston, grabbed the microphone and sounded like he was auditioning for a reboot of “Hee-Haw.” It was certifiable cringe on a regional level, but his peculiar voice inflections for SEC Media Days in Dallas were embarrassing on an international scale.
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There’s a college football reporter from Ireland at SEC Media Days. I’m all for the Irish getting into college football. The Irish reporter asked Kelly about trying to schedule a game in Dublin. Kelly, who identifies as Irish Catholic, did his best to make me wish I was drinking Guinness for breakfast.
I’ve attached a link to the audio of Kelly’s answer. He attempted to say “Ireland” with an Irish accent and then some other words were sprinkled in with hints of green clover, too. Fun stuff at the beginning of talking season, but it’s starting to seem like LSU’s coach is nothing more than the SEC’s biggest sham rather than some kind of darling shamrock.
In Texas, the expression for someone blowing smoke is “all hat and no cattle.” It means something or someone lacks substance. Back in Irondale growing up, we would have called Kelly a jive turkey. There will always be fakes, phonies and cheap imitations when it comes to SEC football. That’s just the nature of competition in a league like the SEC.
There’s plenty of passion to go around — and money, too — but talent remains at a premium.
With everything changing in college football this summer, there will be new opportunities for teams to take advantage of the chaos. In the SEC, the old two-division system is being replaced by one single, 16-team format. In addition to that, the new scheduling model is based around past success rather than geography. From a larger perspective, the expanded playoffs — four teams to 12 — changes the landscape of college football at the national level.
Speaking as an analyst on Monday, former Alabama coach Nick Saban said he believes six or seven teams in the SEC will be in the mix for a playoff spot. We’ll save the column about the SEC’s contenders for Wednesday. I’ve been asking a series of 10 Burning Questions throughout this offseason of change for college football. Question No.8: Who is the biggest pretender of the new-look SEC?
10 BURNING QUESTIONS
Question 1: Will Isaiah Bond regret leaving Alabama for Texas?
Question 2: What does Nick Saban really think about Alabama?
Question 3: Where is the hottest seat in college football?
Question 4: Is Oklahoma ready for the SEC?
Question 5: Why is Horns Down so satisfying?
Question 6: Why are there no Black coaches in the SEC?
Question 7: Did Saban leave at the perfect time for Alabama?
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m having a hard time taking LSU seriously with Kelly as the coach of the Tigers. It was a poor fit from the beginning, and it’s still awkward. With LSU’s old coach, people knew what they were getting. Orgeron was a lot of things, but no one would ever accuse him of being a phony imitation of a hard-charging SEC football coach.
Orgeron won a national championship in his third season and delivered to the Bayou Bengal faithful one of the best teams in the history of college football. It’s Year 3 for Kelly in 2024, and this is the season we’re going to learn the truth — one way or another — about the coach who left Notre Dame for the SEC.
He might have fooled me before, but I’m not buying Kelly’s jive any longer. Until further notice, LSU’s coach is the biggest pretender in the SEC and LSU looks like a fading SEC star with him as its coach.
LSU’s defense was awful last season. To correct the problem, Kelly went out and hired Missouri’s defensive coordinator over the offseason with the hopes that Blake Baker could pump some passion into the Tigers’ defense. Baker is now the highest paid assistant coach in college football at $2.5 million per season.
At baseline, LSU should have one of the best defenses in the country every season. That Kelly let the defense slip is an indictment on his understanding of how to win in the SEC. Now I’m supposed to believe that a coach from Missouri is the answer?
“Clearly being the No. 1 offense in the country was not good enough,” Kelly said on Monday. “I think you have to have much more balance … Offensively and defensively, we have got to be able to complement each other. We didn’t do that last year.
“What we’re going to need is that complement on defense; going to have to play better defense this year. I think we’ve made the necessary strides in the offseason to continue on that growth.”
Kelly is attempting to shift all the blame for 2023 off his back, but it’s his team. In the end, a team is going to adapt itself to the personality and character of its coach.
Fake-accent Brian Kelly was supposed to be the answer to Saban for LSU. He’s not, and if he loses back-to-back games to first-year coaches at Texas A&M and Alabama, then Kelly’s pants will be cooking by the time LSU heads to Florida for its rivalry game against the Gators.
If the Tigers don’t make the playoffs in Year 3, then the voices will turn heavy throughout Death Valley. And there will be nothing phony about the anger in those authentic Cajun accents.
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Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the book “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”