Brian Kelly's Thoughts: The Bowl, NIL and the future

LSU will ring in the New Year in Tampa as the 13th-ranked Tigers will face Wisconsin in the 2024 ReliaQuest Bowl on New Year’s Day at Raymond James Stadium.

Kickoff for the fifth all-time meeting between LSU and Wisconsin is set for Monday, Jan. 1 at 11 a.m. CT and will be televised on ESPN2.

LSU enters the contest with a 9-3 overall mark and ranked No. 13 in all three major polls – CFP, AP, and Coaches. The Tigers closed the regular season by winning six of their final seven games, including wins over Florida (52-35), Georgia State (56-14) and Texas A&M (42-30) to close out the month of November.

Wisconsin tied for second in the Big Ten Western Division and brings a 7-5 overall mark into the contest. The Badgers closed the regular season on a two-game winning streak with victories over Nebraska and Minnesota.

Here’s what LSU head coach Brian Kelly said in Tampa about the bowl matchup, insight into players on the roster, a look into the future of the team, the ongoing NIL discussions and more. Also, some thoughts from Wisconsin head coach Luke Fickell.

Q. You’ve got a pair of 1,000-yard receivers in Malik and Brian, I’m wondering about your perspective on what makes them stand out and why are they such a challenge for opposing defenses other than the fact that they are very talented?

BRIAN KELLY: Each one brings a different element to the game. Malik’s ability to run after the catch is extraordinary. He’s a physical player, makes people miss, but breaks tackles. A ferocious competitor.

Brian, his ball skills down the field, his size obviously makes him a difficult one-on-one matchup. Playing into the field gives him a lot of opportunities to obviously get down the field. He had a quarterback who got him the football. When you make that equation work, many of the times those guys came up big, made big plays and big catches. We got him the football.

Little bit different in a sense of what they can do, but both as good as I’ve had in my 30-plus years.

Q. Brian, with Joe and Cortez having that shared coordinator title, what are they both responsible for in terms of getting ready for this? Which one is actually calling the plays?

BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I think what’s really most important internally is the organization of the offense because a lot of that is already in place and has been in place for the last four or five months.

I think the way it’s really filtered out is they’ve handed off different assignments within the staff itself. Joe has focused a lot on the run game protections, things that would center around the quarterback. Cortez much more on the passing game.

They’ll keep their assignments. Joe is in the box and Cortez is on the sideline. Those plays will generally probably come from the box to the sideline. There will be collaboration on a game plan. They’ll both be part of it.

Again, I think from a communication standpoint, it will come down from the press box and then into the game. I’ll get a chance to listen and make sure it’s the way I want it to go.

Q. Brian, Logan Diggs is someone who obviously dealt with injuries late in the season. How big of a role do you expect him to have this game? How important is it for him to be out here with the team?

BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I think it’s very important. Look, I think we all know that his physicality, his ability to play injury-free helped our football team immensely. When he’s banged up, obviously we’ve turned to other players that we think very highly of, as well.

He looks good in practice. He’s got a great attitude. We expect him to be the kind of player he’s been when he’s been healthy for us.

We’re really fortunate that we’ve got I think 20 out of the 21 players playing in this game. That allows these guys to go out and finish on a high note. So it should be fun to watch him play.

Q. Coach Kelly, how does Garrett look now after a couple of days? We talked to him yesterday. He talked about that jump from the mentality of a backup to approaching it as a starter. How have you seen him digest that?

BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I think it’s different. From when you going from being the backup to the starter, everything is a little bit faster. I think there’s a little bit more of a need to communicate and take the reins. When you’re a backup, you can kind of muddle your way through it a little bit, fake your way through it. There’s no faking now. You’re running it.

Those guys want the ball, too. You better get them the ball. They’re not out there just for show. He’s got a lot of pressure on him. But that’s why he’s here. He loves the bright lights. He kind of rises to that kind of occasion.

He walks around the building a little bit differently, there’s no doubt. But he hasn’t played. So the game is different than practice. He’s preparing. When it’s live, and Wisconsin’s got a great scheme, they do a lot of really good things defensively, and he’ll be challenged. It will be fun to watch him play on Monday.

Q. What are the pluses and minuses of NIL to this point? What are the positives in terms of moving the sport forward or hurting the sport?

BRIAN KELLY: How long do you want this press conference to go (smiling)?

LUKE FICKELL: Go ahead, coach (smiling).

BRIAN KELLY: In its purest form, you would ask any coach, NIL is great. The problem is when you add other things to it, it becomes a different animal. When you add transfer portal, inducements, agents, other things, NIL then becomes in some instances play-for-pay. That’s not what it was intended to be.

When it becomes pay-for-play, it changes the equation. It changes recruiting. It changes your roster. It changes the way kids go from being committed and having responsibilities to what’s mine, when can I get it. That’s not what this was intended to be.

NIL in its purest form, I don’t know if there’s a coach that wouldn’t stand on this table and say that’s a great thing. It’s all the other add-ons that have made this thing so difficult and slippery to handle.

LUKE FICKELL: Without any structure, I think anything is a problem. To me, where we are right now, a bit in college sports, college football in particular, I’m not sure what the structure is. Do we have governing? Do we have any rules that apply?

You can call it NIL, you can call it whatever. The real I think issue is where are the structures? What are the rules behind what it is that we’re doing?

Like coach said, nobody would deny a guy an opportunity to use his name, image and likeness. It’s just the structure we are looking in a lot of the things give a lot of flexibility. I think that’s what makes it difficult for us as coaches. I think it makes it difficult on 18- to 22-year-olds, to be able to stay focused and figure out what you really want to do, how you want to do it. There’s a lot of options out there I think make it much more difficult.

Q. Zalance Heard didn’t travel down here. Do you expect to get him back at some point?

BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I think we’re going to have those conversations. I think he’s looking at his role at LSU, evaluating it. There’s been some conversations. We’re taking some time. We’ll reengage and have some more conversations after the game.

But I think it’s a good time right now for us just to focus on those guys that are with us right now, then we’ll pick up the conversations with him and his family after the bowl game.

Q. Talk about your time at Cincinnati and how it affects you’re coaching at LSU and Wisconsin.

BRIAN KELLY: I think in many instances, my entire journey from Grand Valley State to Central Michigan to Cincinnati, Luke would probably say the same thing, you have to deal with less in some instances and it makes you a better coach. You have to know all of the jobs. It makes you better prepared when you have more resources that you’re more able to make sure that everybody is running in the same lane.

When you work at a place like Cincinnati that may not have some of the things that you have, you have to make up for that. You have to be more creative. You can’t say, We don’t have it. That’s not good enough because you got to make do with not having things like that.

I think it makes you a better coach. Then you take that with you at the next stop. You become more creative. You become more inquisitive in looking at how you can do it even better. That’s how it’s helped me. I don’t want to speak for Luke, but I’m sure that helped him at Cincinnati, as well.

LUKE FICKELL: There’s no doubt. I think that you learn to not make excuses first and foremost. I would take this opportunity, I’ve said this when I was at Cincinnati, once you get to a point where we were obviously moving to a different conference, I would say I don’t understand why we still use the term ‘Power Five’. We’re all playing the same game, right? We all understand there’s some differences in what it is that we’re doing.

Sometimes when we use that term, we look down upon those guys aren’t at the same level as us when in reality they are. Maybe they don’t have as many things. Like coach and I were, you learn to not make excuses for things, just try to do more with less. I don’t mean that with players. I mean that sometimes with resources and things.

Twofold for me, I didn’t get to have some of the kind of experiences that coach had of coming up Grand Valley and Central. In some ways I was fortunate but unfortunate to be at obviously a Big Ten school, then go on.

You recognize what it is that you need to do and what it is that you have, then try to be really grateful for the things that you do have.

I think more than anything for me, it helped me kind of be organized and understand that you don’t always need more to have success. You have to find ways to use the things that you do have.

Q. Coach Kelly, having NIL come along, is it an agitation, something that is bothersome, or as you coach, a new challenge comes up, it’s just another new challenge that you’ve seen that is similar to others over the years?

BRIAN KELLY: I think it’s improvise, adapt. We’re putting the plane together at 35,000 feet. There’s no rules. You’re trying to figure this thing out as you go.

I think there’s just a lot of things that we’re trying to do that make sense that still keep the student-athlete at the center of this.

Look, we’re parents as well, right? We try to keep an eye on how would we want our sons to handle these situations and how would we want them to learn from them. All money’s not good money. Sometimes lessons have to be learned. Sometimes you might lose somebody in NIL because of this.

We’re going through these experiences right now, and some of them are hard. But we’re hopeful that down the line that we can get some guidelines, we can get maybe a calendar that makes sense.

Right now, I’ll just give you an example, we’re preparing our bowl team, but we were recruiting freshmen, we were dealing with the transfer portal, we were getting our players evaluated for the NFL Draft, and we were trying to retain our players. All five of those things at once within, what, a 30-day window. That doesn’t make sense.

There are so many things that are going to have to change along the way if we are going to do all these things and not have some issues come up like they have.

Q. You talked about Jaxon Howard as one of the guys that upped his stock a little bit. With these bowl practices, who else has upped their stock going into this game but more so into the off-season?

BRIAN KELLY: Well, one of the things that we can talk about is getting this bowl game as the additional game, really obviously is probably the most sensible thing that’s ever occurred in my time where these kids can play in this game after they’ve used their four games. You get a chance for these kids to stay motivated, practice and play in this game. Jaxon is one of those guys that gets this opportunity.

A guy like Kylin Jackson gets an opportunity to play in a game like this, which is really big for him. A couple of the defensive guys that needed more reps, I think the freshmen corners, all of those guys get an opportunity.

As Luke mentioned, this is our 13th practice, so it’s spring ball for all of these young guys. They get more opportunities to go out and develop more. Then they get to finish it up with a game against a Big Ten opponent.

I think a lot of our young players, especially on the defensive side of the ball, get a great opportunity with this opportunity.

Q. This particular bowl has matched up the SEC and Big Ten for decades. The two conferences are building up to places we haven’t seen before. How do you think each conference views the other one? Is there a real rivalry, a measuring stick, when you get in this part of the year about winning a game against the SEC and Big Ten?

LUKE FICKELL: I’ve been fortunate enough to be in the Big Ten for a long time. Back in the Big Ten obviously this year. It’s always been kind of these two groups saying they had the upper hand in college football in general.

I think in the last year, we’ve truly recognized and seen that the two conferences that are basically pushing and growing, what it is that’s going to happen in college football is the SEC and Big Ten. I kind of always believed that, being in the Big Ten for a long time, now seeing what’s happened in the last year or so. I think it’s kind of showing itself all over the place.

I think there is a rivalry. I think to say the conferences play different and things like that, that used to be one of the bigger deals. I think there’s a lot more that’s coming closer and closer together as far as how they play the game. It’s not just the that the Big Ten runs the ball, the SEC plays with (indiscernible).

I think as we continue to grow what’s happening in college football, you’re seeing the two premier conferences basically playing more similar maybe than they have in the past.

BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I don’t see a huge schematic. I wouldn’t say the schematically the Big Ten does this, the SEC does that. I think it’s more in terms of these are the two elite conferences in college football.

If there’s legislation coming out of the SEC or the Big Ten, it’s generally going to change the landscape of what is out there. If we’re aligned together, the SEC and the Big Ten, you’re generally going to see movement. So I think that the two conferences in many ways are aligned much more than just football. I think philosophy is probably the biggest thing. I think that’s a good thing.

With so many moving pieces in college football today, I think the one thing that you can count on is that the SEC and Big Ten are pretty much going to be aligned in one thing, and that is pushing college football to be the number one game in the country.

Q. Coach Kelly, a player like Da’Shawn Womack, what about him in a game like this?

BRIAN KELLY: Yes, again, another true freshman that will get an opportunity to play quite a bit. ‘Development’ is an interesting word, right? You develop at different times throughout the year. It’s time to come out of the oven, right? You keep them in there for so long, then it’s time to play.

We feel like it’s time for him to play. We’re going to put him in a position where we think he can help us. He’s done a really good job this year of maturing. I think a lot of it was his maturation. That was the first time he was put in front of the media, and that was not by accident. We do things here pretty intentional. We think he’s ready. It will be fun to watch him play.

Q. How much of a challenge is it to prepare without Jayden Daniels? What has he meant to your team? What would you tell a general manager that separates him from any other quarterback in this upcoming draft?

BRIAN KELLY: Well, I’d love to play with Jayden Daniels on my team. Who wouldn’t? He’s fun to watch.

Obviously we feel really good about Garrett as our number two. Obviously he’s got the keys to the car going forward in ’24.

The offense, he knows it well. He’ll be able to do the things that we need to do offensively, run it, throw it, do the things that are necessary to be a championship football team.

Having said that, Daniels is clearly in my opinion the best quarterback in the country. He has developed the ability to push the ball down the field like no one that I’ve coached. His quarterback savvy, his ability to manage all protections. He calls everything at the line of scrimmage, gets us in the right plays.

He’s going to walk into the building and he’s going to command the respect of the building. Look, these are professionals. You can’t walk in there and not command the respect of a building. That’s what he’ll do.

I think certainly his play showed itself on film. But what they don’t know about him is that he’s a leader and he’ll command the respect of the entire room.

Q. Brian, a real quick one, will (Will) Campbell be expected to play after missing practice today?

BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, he’s just had the flu. We just kept him back at the hotel, just felt like it was best to give him a day off and get him healthy.

Q. You mentioned Garrett maybe having the keys in ’24. Also playing in AJ Swann. How do you plan on balancing that approaching that quarterback room?

BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, I mean, look, it’s very similar to what last year where Jayden came back, but we gave Nuss a fair shot at competing for that starting position. Nuss pushed it, but Jayden was better.

We’ll have the same situation where AJ will have a chance to take that job from him. It is not a closed position. We were transparent with him. Nuss knows that, too. We’re going to be honest and open about the competition. You don’t bring in a guy who started at Vanderbilt and say, Listen, you’re coming in but you have no chance. That doesn’t make any sense. Nuss knew that, too.

We’ll move forward going into the spring.

Q. Coach Kelly, Malik (Nabers) and Mekhi (Wingo) will be playing in this game, two potential first-rounders not opting out. Did that take any convincing or that’s just what they’re built like?

BRIAN KELLY: It’s 90% what they’re built like and 10% they love to play football. They love their teammates. They love playing football.

Look, everybody that plays this game, I think the core of it is you got to love to play. You can’t be playing for other reasons. If you love to play this game and you love it for the old-fashioned reasons of I love my teammates, I love playing for LSU, then you’re going to have guys playing these games.

These two in particular, also in Malik’s case, he’s got some things that he wanted to individually accomplish, too. That’s okay. That’s okay because he starts with the premise of I want to play with my teammates and finish this out, and I love to play football.