Brian Kelly buyout: LSU contract details if Tigers move on from embattled football coach

Admin November 23, 2024

In November 2021, LSU pulled off a move that stunned much of the college football world when it hired Brian Kelly as its next head coach.

Not only had athletic director Scott Woodward and the Tigers managed to get a sitting head coach who had won 73% of his career games and made five New Year’s Six bowl games, but the program they successfully lured him away from was none other than Notre Dame, one of the sport’s most historically accomplished and mythologized entities.

At the time, it was widely considered a coup, with an SEC program throwing its weight around to hire a proven winner who was one of college football’s most decorated coaches.

Fewer than three full years later, things have changed quite a bit.

After a strong debut in 2022, when the Tigers went 10-4 and made the SEC championship game, Kelly guided LSU to a 10-3 finish in 2023 that felt underwhelming given that the team was led by Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels and star wide receiver Malik Nabers, both of whom were top-10 picks in the 2024 NFL draft.

If last season was a disappointment, the 2024 campaign has been something even worse.

A once-promising season for the Tigers has been derailed in recent weeks, with Kelly’s squad dropping three consecutive games following a 6-1 start in which it rose to No. 7 in the US LBM Coaches Poll. The latest of those setbacks was the most gutting yet, with LSU falling 27-16 on the road to what had been a 4-5 Florida team coming off a 32-point loss to Texas.

The skid has raised questions not just about this specific group of Tigers, but also Kelly. Is he still the right man to lead the program in the deep and ruthlessly competitive SEC?

Here’s what you need to know about Kelly’s contract, including its buyout and overall value:

SALARY DATABASE: See where Brian Kelly ranks among highest-paid college football coaches

Brian Kelly LSU contract details

Contract length: 10 years
Contract value: $95 million

For LSU and Woodward to get their big-name, headline-generating hire, they needed to write quite the check.

When he decided to leave Notre Dame after 12 seasons, Kelly became one of college football’s highest-paid coaches. At $9,975,000 in total pay, he’s No. 8 among FBS coaches in the USA TODAY Coaches Salary database.

Of the seven coaches ahead of him, four are in the SEC, led by Georgia’s Kirby Smart at No. 1.

Brian Kelly buyout

If Kelly is fired without cause on Dec. 1, he would be owed $61,738,333 based on the terms of the contract he signed on April 6, 2022.

In the event he’s fired without cause, Kelly is set to receive 90% of his remaining base salary and supplemental compensation that would have been made payable to him over the remainder of his contract, which runs through Dec. 31, 2031 – as well as any prorated longevity compensation for the year of termination.

The buyout would be paid to Kelly in monthly installments over the course of the remaining term.

Kelly’s buyout is the fourth-highest in the FBS, behind only Smart, Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer and Florida State’s Mike Norvell.

There’s only one example in college football history of a school paying a buyout of that size, and it came last year in the SEC, when Texas A&M paid more than $77 million to oust Jimbo Fisher. It’s the only buyout larger than $22 million that an FBS school has ever executed.

Brian Kelly record

Heading into LSU’s game Saturday against Vanderbilt, Kelly has a career record of 192-73 at the FBS level. That mark includes previous coaching stops at (in order) Central Michigan, Cincinnati and Notre Dame.

After going 34-6 at Cincinnati and 113-40 at Notre Dame, Kelly has fallen short of the immense expectations that greeted him at LSU, a well-resourced program at which each of his three immediate full-time predecessors won a national championship. Nearing the end of his third season, Kelly is 26-11 with the Tigers.

Here’s a look at his year-by-year record during his time in Baton Rouge: