By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Former LSU football coach Brian Kelly may not be the lead candidate to be Michigan’s next football coach in the aftermath of the sad and embarrassing firing of Sherrone Moore on Wednesday for an inappropriate relationship with a female staff member.
Moore, 39, was in Washtenaw County jail in Ann Arbor on Thursday for allegedly hitting the woman after being fired with cause – apparently a lot of cause.
Considering how Michigan looked the other way and enabled former coach and serial NCAA rules violator Jim Harbaugh’s organized, premeditated and sinister scouting scandal two years ago, the latest mess may be getting covered up or seriously sanitized had Moore – 16-8 (.666) and 11-6 in the Big Ten (.647) – won more.
Michigan replaced one cheater with another, shredding its once impeccable reputation.https://t.co/yX5lQB5mO0
— Matt Hayes (@MattHayesCFB) December 11, 2025
When you consider how soiled and scandal-ridden Michigan is, Kelly may not be that bad of a hire. He never won big at LSU, and definitely not commensurate to his hefty, $100 million contract. But he did inherit a team that went 5-5 and 6-7 and won 70 percent of his games – 65 percent in the SEC.
And there were no major scandals.
There were reports of Kelly getting divorced in 2023, but he and his wife soon reconciled.
Lots of gossip, sure, but that seemed to materialize more when LSU tried to get out of paying Kelly’s $54 million buyout, and still lost.
I do enjoy telling you I told you so. Column From The Vault:https://t.co/vyqueDjzO9
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) December 10, 2025
Among the realistic, hotter candidates to replace Moore is Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham, who is a wunderkind at 35. He is 19-7 over the last two seasons after a 3-9 campaign in his first year. Dillingham might be at LSU now had Lane Kiffin decided to stay at Ole Miss, or go to Florida or Florida State. Dillingham’s 11-3 season in 2024 was Arizona State’s first double-digit win season since 2014. Since 2015, there have been five losing seasons there.
Washington coach Jedd Fisch is just 49 and a former Michigan quarterbacks coach and pass game coordinator under Harbaugh n 2015 and ’16. After inheriting a depleted roster from coach Kalen DeBoer in 2024 after the Huskies reached a national championship game loss to Michigan in the 2023 season, Fisch went 6-7 before an 8-4 turnaround this season.
BYU coach Kanlani Sitake, 50, is 24-4 in his last two seasons and was seriously considered by Penn State before it hired Matt Campbell, 46, from Iowa State. There is also Wake Forest first-year coach Jake Dickert, 42. He has gone 8-4 after turning around Washington State from 2021-24.
Kelly is 64 and now viewed as a coach who was just not that hungry while at LSU, where garnered a $100 million contract for 10 years when he was 60. He likely saw the move from Notre Dame to the Tigers before the 2022 season as his personal parachute of gold as much as or more than a chance to win his first major college national championship.
He made approximately $9 million a year at Notre Dame, but what former LSU athletic director Scott Woodward did that Notre Dame hadn’t was add a much larger guaranteed sum.
“It wasn’t about the annual salary,” Kelly told Tiger Rag at the time, which may have circled Kelly’s motivations not exactly being on the field.
Look who won his first big game since beating Nick Saban and Alabama in 2022! Brian Kelly gets last laugh as LSU surrenders and plans to pay him full $54 million buyout:https://t.co/8tOvUwXDPf
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) November 27, 2025
Kelly’s contract was guaranteed to the tune of a $54 million buyout that he will be walking away with from LSU after being fired without cause with six years remaining on his contract.
Should Kelly get another job, like at Michigan, that buyout will be decreased by his compensation at his new job, according to his LSU contract. So, Kelly could accept an offer from Michigan significantly lower than what it may pay a younger, hotter candidate, because he knows he’ll be getting as much or close to the salary he demands because of the LSU money. And Michigan would get a coach basically on Black Friday sale prices.
On a lower pay scale, that is what happened when John Brady became Arkansas State’s basketball coach after LSU fired him without cause him during the 2008 season with several years remaining on his deal. LSU ended up paying Brady a much larger portion of his salary than did Arkansas State because of Brady’s contract with LSU.
Michigan could hire Kelly, let LSU pay the lion’s share of his salary and use the money you’re not paying Kelly that LSU is to further fund your NIL and portal packages. This happens often in Major League Baseball when a team releases an underachieving free agent it paid far too much for, and his new team gets a player still getting most of his pay from the former team.
Michigan would also be getting the winningest Notre Dame coach in history (113-40, .739 winning percentage) and a coach who had seven seasons of 10 or more wins there in addition to reaching the BCS title game and winning two New Year’s Day bowl games. He is also the winningest active college head football coach out there at 297-109-2 (.727 winning percentage).
Kelly would be back home amid his Midwest coaching roots. Ann Arbor is just three hours from Notre Dame. He would fit better. Kelly already won two Division II national championships in Allendale, Michigan, at Grand Valley State in 2002 and ’03. He also had great success at Cincinnati from 2006-09, going 34-6 (.850). He also coached at Central Michigan from 2004-06.
If Kelly hires an offensive coordinator more like Mike Denbrock than Joe Sloan and a defensive coordinator more like Blake Baker than Matt House and recruits better via the high schools and portal and generally pays closer attention, he could win big at Michigan.
Of all the coaches fired in 2025, Kelly clearly won the most in that last job – 34-14 (.708) and 19-10 in the SEC (.655) at LSU. James Franklin, now at Virginia Tech, was 104-45 (.697) and 64-36 in the Big Ten (.640) at Penn State. Mike Gundy was 170-90 (.653) and 102-72 in the Big 12 (.586) at Oklahoma State.
And don’t forget Tennessee coach Josh Heupel, who was not fired but continues to illustrate how Rocky Top’s lowered expectations have the Vols in the Valley of Mediocrity. He is also worse than Kelly at 45-19 (.703) and 24-16 in the SEC (.600).
Michigan could do better than Brian Kelly, but it also could do a lot worse, which it just did.
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