Brian Kelly sounds off on NIL: "Whether we like it or not, it’s where we are.”

Brian Kelly wasted no time addressing the elephant in the room on Wednesday’s Signing Day press conference at LSU. The Tigers’ head coach quickly talked about the new landscape and how recruiting has become all about money, before taking more questions about NIL and the challenges it presents.

It’s not the first time Kelly has talked openly about this new world he’s trying to navigate, but it was perhaps the most poignant. Coming off of weeks where the No. 1 player in the country Bryce Underwood flipped from LSU to Michigan and five-star cornerback Kaleb Phillips flipped from LSU to Texas, Kelly understands his program is in the spotlight and discussed the uphill climb LSU is facing right now.

“That’s the bar. It’s Oregon, Ohio State, Michigan, Georgia, Alabama, Notre Dame, I could keep naming the teams. Now, it’s no longer about just your brand,” Kelly said. “Your brand has to be backed up with the ability to supplement that with dollars because that’s what we’re in. If you want to get in the portal and close some of these recruitments, you have to have active participation from a donor base and it can’t just be one or two guys. It has to be from all of those that want to see their schools do well. They have to be involved. If LSU wants to be at the top of the food chain, then we have to be involved as well. That’s the reality of where we are today. Whether we like it or not, it’s where we are.”

The Tigers put together another top-10 class, seemingly despite their shortcomings in the NIL era. Kelly laid out several factors that go into NIL that LSU has utilized effectively, but says the demand from other teams drives up the price to ridiculous levels, well past the players’ value. 

Kelly understands LSU can only get so far on building relationships and doing things the way they used to be done. On Wednesday, he put out a call out to donors to step up so LSU could get a seat at the table in order to compete with the best, and most wealthy, programs in the nation.

“Early on it was educating the donors about what the landscape was in college football and making them understand what a collective was and what recruiting is,” Kelly said. “We’re going to recruit and put in the time for players that want to graduate and play for championships, but we also have to be able to provide them with the NIL resources in our collective so they actually come here, because other schools are going to offer them too. If you want to be in the big poker game, this is what the ante is. That was educational for our group and all across the country. We have donors that still don’t want to give to that and I get it, but we are still in the big poker game. We still need support so we can continue to build our roster.”

In the coming months in 2025, revenue sharing promises to allocate resources more evenly and potentially level the playing field a bit, but that doesn’t help Kelly this offseason as he looks to build a new team and set the foundation for the future. He talked about being proactive with fundraising before revenue sharing begins in order to help this program stay above water.

Now, with signing day in the rearview, Kelly’s staff has plenty to be happy with, but the loss of a few top players still casts a shadow over the program and brings to light what Kelly and all LSU fans know. The Tigers need more help to get over the top.

Kelly will continue to be blunt about the challenges and look to raise the urgency level moving forward as college football as we know it has changed significantly since he took the job three years ago. Kelly isn’t going anywhere, though. The Tigers head coach is intent on finding a way at the place he’s called the final stop of his career.

“If you’re a fan, you can look at this glass half full or glass half empty,” Kelly said. “This is an outstanding class. Would we have wanted all of those guys? Yea, we fought hard for all of those guys, but I think I laid a pretty good message to what this recruiting is all about. Those two guys loved LSU. They didn’t have much of a choice. We’re out there fighting to put together a great class and all of these kids wanted to be here and be a part of LSU because they felt this is going to be a championship program. Our fans need to know that. What finishes it off is we need to get continued support from our donor base so we can continue to augment the roster through the transfer portal, which is the other way of building your roster in this new world. If we do that, the glass is certainly half full.”