The Drop, Week 9: Seems Like A Skills Issue

We take note this week, because it is impossible not to, that Brian Kelly's tenure at LSU has come to an ignoble end. That in and of itself is not shocking; there's more than one reason Baton Rouge is referred to as "Death Valley," and it sure isn't because of a climate that is hot and dry.

Kelly was probably destined to fail there. I've long thought that success in the SEC requires a particular set of coaching skills that simply cannot be picked up anywhere else. Mind you, I don't know what those skills are. Otherwise I'd be packaging them into a $1,399 online seminar, and I would probably sell that seminar out. There are coaches who have failed in the SEC but gone on to succeed elsewhere, and there are coaches who have succeeded elsewhere but failed in the SEC. (But enough about Bret Bielema.) That's what leads me to believe that, while it might not be strictly necessary to cut one's teeth as an SEC assistant if one's ultimate goal is to head up an SEC program, it dang sure isn't going to hurt a coach any.

I trust I don't need to tell you how much prior SEC experience Brian Kelly had.

Still, I can't help but think there is one circumstance that might have gotten Kelly another year or two, at least. That's if Nick Saban were still coaching.

It might have seemed to outsiders like Saban's retirement led the other SEC coaches to breathe a sigh of relief, but I'll bet it was the other way around. So long as Saban was there, the pressure to win the conference was off, because you just weren't going to win it. But once he was gone? And once it was clear Kalen DeBoer wasn't just going to pick up where Saban left off? Well, how come we're not winning more games, Coach? You can beat Alabama now!

I mean, that's how it was in the Big Ten when the only preseason question was whether this was a Michigan year or an Ohio State year. There was no shame in finishing third to those teams. Then Hayden Fry's Hawkeyes won the league in 1981 and suddenly, the dog caught the car. Now what?

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