Brian Kelly reveals why he was emotional after win over Alabama

Less than one year into Brian Kelly’s tenure with LSU and he’s already making the coaching change look genius. For most of the 2010’s, Kelly toiled away in South Bend, taking decent Notre Dame teams to the playoff, where they’d inevitably be slaughtered by, usually, Alabama.

But during his first go-around in Baton Rouge with that Mardi Grad Magic, Kelly was finally able to defeat Nick Saban’s Alabama. So of course the victory was an emotional moment for Coach Kelly and the team. Because of his past and because of the last two years for the LSU program and how far they’ve come in just two-thirds of a season under Kelly.

Here was him after the game, reflecting on how much this particular win means to both himself and the program as a whole.

Kelly said it was such an emotional win “Because that was such a great game. I mean, I had never beaten Alabama. And so, you know, those things are kind of like…you want to check the box and move on. So yeah, you get a little emotional about those moments. And I was emotional not for myself but I was emotional for our team. Because I know what we looked like in January. And to see where we are today, that’s pretty emotional, right?”

Kelly clearly in a state of awe at LSU’s accomplishments just this fall. Bright, bright future in Baton Rouge.

Brian Kelly explains choice to go for two after beating Alabama

Getting over that hump required some major guts from Kelly, who went for two and got it to seal the deal in the first overtime.

“It was a decision at that moment,” explained Kelly. “I just felt as I thought about it, if we could boil this game down to one play, and win this game. Before the game started, if you asked me, ‘Hey, we’re going to give you one play, and if you’re successful on that one play, you beat Alabama,’ I would’ve taken that 100 times out of 100. So at that moment, it kind of hit me that way. I knew we had a really good play that we haven’t used, and they haven’t seen. And when you get five out on the perimeter, you truly have a threat.

“So I felt really good about the play, it was well executed and that was the thought behind it.”

Of course, Kelly would’ve been questioned into oblivion if the try wasn’t successful. But he believes his thought process behind the move was sound enough that the public would’ve understood.