By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
“Blame It On Memphis,” says a song by country, blues band The Fullertons with the line, “If wishes were water, I’d be drier than the mouth of hell. Well, you can blame it on Memphis, don’t you blame it on me.”
Well, LSU fans can blame Memphis, too, because the University of Memphis Tigers football program just hired former LSU Tigers football coach Brian Kelly as a consultant, and they will not even pay him.
That means, LSU will continue to pay Kelly virtually all of his $54 million buyout he received by contract by LSU last year after being fired without cause in the fourth year of a 10-year contract at approximately $100 million a year.
Kelly’s contract, which was given to him by then LSU athletic director Scott Woodward when he hired him away from Notre Dame in 2021, states that the salary of a job he gets in coaching or media will decrease that sum from what LSU pays him. In this case, there is no sum subtracted from LSU’s bill.
Kelly was recently hired as a commentator at CBS Sports, but his stipend there is not expected to significantly impact LSU’s monthly payments to him. Those are between $750,000 and $800,000 a month through 2031, so Kelly’s pockets are anything but “drier than the mouth of hell.”
Welcome to Louisiana Shakespearean University … LSU athletic director Scott Woodward gets the dagger 4 days after knifing football coach Brian Kelly.https://t.co/kT0otYNs6N
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) October 31, 2025
The huge contract had much to do with Woodward being fired four days after he fired Kelly last October. And it didn’t help Woodward’s job security that he also hired the previous biggest bust in college football coaching – Jimbo Fisher, who is also no longer coaching and has been a consultant at Memphis recently as well.
As Texas A&M’s athletic director in 2017, Woodward hired Fisher away from Florida State to be the Aggies’ coach at $75 million over 10 years. When Fisher was fired late in the 2023 season, he started receiving an historic $77 million buyout that continues to pay him. Woodward had been LSU’s athletic director since 2019 when Fisher was fired, but more than half of the buyout Fisher walked away with at that time was directly attributable to Woodward’s original contract with him.
Most coaching contract buyouts have similar language, which does not demand the coach get another job. Rather, he or she need only actively seek employment. Kelly has done that since getting fired on Oct. 25 after falling out of the College Football Playoff race for the fourth time in his four years at LSU.
So, Kelly gets to get back into coaching in a small way and gets to keep putting it to the place that fired him.
“I’m in a very good position,” Kelly, 64, said in a recent interview with USA Today. “I don’t have to coach again, unless it’s the right coaching position. But I want to coach.”
Or, at least, consult.
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