In the game of NIL irony, I see LSU’s Brian Kelly and raise you Boise State’s Spencer Danielson.
Both stepped in it this week while making comments about NIL that quickly backfired on them because it was so wildly out of touch (Kelly) or so crazily misguided (Danielson).
*****
CLASS OF 2024 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Team | Position | State
CLASS OF 2025 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Team | Position | State
CLASS OF 2026 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Position | State
TRANSFER PORTAL: Latest news | Transfer search | Transfer tracker/player ranking (football) | Transfer team ranking (football) | Transfer tracker/player ranking (basketball) | Transfer team ranking (basketball) | Rivals Portal Twitter
*****
Let’s start with Kelly, the winningest coach in Notre Dame history who left South Bend for LSU because in part he felt the Tigers were fully invested in winning national championships.
The school certainly invested in him with a 10-year, $95 million contract, great facilities, perhaps the best in-state recruiting turf in the country and basically every need granted.
Shortly after Kelly was hired in Baton Rouge, numerous sites wrote stories about the opulent Southern-style mansion that was part of his deal at LSU – an interest-free house and car loan.
So it came off as a total eye-roll moment this week when Kelly, 20-7 in his first two seasons belly-ached about not having enough success in defensive line recruiting.
And it’s because – get this! – LSU is, according to Kelly, “Not in the market of buying players.“
SEC fans, stop your laughing as we all know what has been happening in college football in the South and elsewhere since time immemorial. Buying players is nothing new, it’s just legal now. Not only legal, but encouraged. Not only encouraged, but expected.
Kelly can’t have the house and the car and the exquisite views of the Baton Rouge sunset and not want to give up some dough for top players – or expect to in the NIL age. College football doesn’t work that way anymore. This isn’t Grand Valley State in the 1990s.
LSU has 63 players in the NFL. Ten are defensive linemen. The last three LSU coaches have won national titles in Ed Orgeron, Les Miles and Nick Saban.
That’s the expectation in Baton Rouge – getting NFL talent and winning big. The other expectation is to take advantage of every possible avenue to get your team there and dying on the NIL wall means just dying, because college football is not going back to the way it used to be.
Danielson’s comments might have been even more zany when he said according to Ron Counts of the Idaho Statesman that incoming freshmen at Boise State are “banned” from taking NIL money during their first season. Like that’s even enforceable.
Mind you, Danielson makes more than $1 million a year. Mind you, Danielson also said he’s personally called coaches to tell them to stop tampering with his players including star running back Ashton Jeanty and about a dozen others on his team.
“The amount of tampering and illegal stuff thrown at Ashton and his family and he consistently says, ‘I’m a Boise State Bronco, I want to continue to be a part of this,’ it’s through the roof, way more than people even know,” Danielson said. “That’s a testament to who he is as a kid. And that’s probably just one of 12 guys that at some point have been contacted by schools to get into the portal because of this money and they’ve stayed true to it. And their families have supported us.
"They know that we are different here, how we’re going to develop them, how we’re going to love them is different than other places.
“... If someone was here just for the money or the other stuff, that’s not going to be a fit here. No different in recruiting, that’s why when I talk to recruits I’m upfront about those things. If you’re wanting things that don’t correlate directly to you developing, do not come here. If it’s about your jersey number and how much money you’re getting on the first trip, do not come to Boise State. You will hate me and not want to be here.”
Kelly and Danielson used all the typical coaching buzzwords. That LSU is building something differently, that they want to build relationships, that they want to “develop” players. And at Boise State they love their players like nowhere else. Wait, Kelly said LSU loves its players like nowhere else, so which is it? Every coach says that.
The irony is pretty thick from two smart college football coaches. Both making gobs of money, telling kids their development or their loyalty or their relationship-building will be hindered if they were to make a dime.
Should Boise State have told Danielson he won’t make a salary in his first full year coaching the team to make sure he’s developing the right way?
