Brian Kelly opens up on his relationship, familiarity with Mike Leach

As Brian Kelly preps for his first conference game as LSU’s head coach — the Tigers face Mississippi State at home — he reminisced about how he and Mike Leach, the Bulldogs head coach, go way back.

Even though the SEC is new to Kelly, the people aren’t always, as he and Leach knew other back in their days at Grand Valley State and Iowa Wesleyan, respectively. From there to the big time in the SEC west, it’s been a long road.

“I’ve known him for quite some time,” Kelly said. “Obviously, the tree that he is in — have many, many acquaintances. I’ve known him since the days I was at Grand Valley State and he was at Iowa Wesleyan. We shared a lot of common acquaintances in the business itself.”

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Since crossing paths back during the fledgling days of their coaching careers, Kelly and Leach have coached at a number of places. Kelly has been the head coach at Central Michigan, Notre Dame and now LSU since his time at GVSU. Leach has been the coach at Texas Tech, Washington State and now Mississippi State.

While their personal coaching styles and on-the-field schemes on offense and defense vary greatly, Kelly has taken plenty from Leach, and surely vice versa. And while no one will be mistaking LSU’s offense for Leach’s air raid attack — or the other way around — the give and take is ongoing.

“We’ve gotten the chance to know quite a bit about the offensive structures,” said Kelly. “There’s a lot of concepts that he’s run that I was running about 25 years ago as well. So, we have obviously run into each other many times along our careers.”