Pladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of The Bus with the Boys Spring Tour. We are sitting here with Coach Kelly, Coach Electrostack to have you on. But first I must read this ad from Chevrolet. Chevrolet is a trusted company that has been innovating for the past one hundred years. Up to now, most electric ehagles have either too expensive, too small, or too limited in capabilities for most people's. Chevrolet is committed to making EV's available for
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EV's for everyone. Yeah, I'm everywhere everywhere. You're into EV's. I have an EV you're going green.
I have an EV. I don't know if I'm green. But these evs man, they can move. They came out of traffic.
Yeah, there's no question. Way what a pleasure is that good? It is appreciate. It's been awesome.
Your staff everyone, we've we've been talking about it. Super accommodating.
Well, they're scared of you guys, whole.
Afraid of schools might not be then if that's how it works, that if if all the places as far as accommodation goes, I would give number one in Nebraska because.
I don't know what it is this year.
This year we've known Nebraska, Michigan. Yeah, we went to Tennessee because they're in the backyard. We've gotten to know South Carolina a little bit. But this year we kind of like stepped out and tried to going to new schools and everything like that. But your guys, is like the accommodation, how the hospitality here is othern hospitality.
If we didn't do it that way it listen, we'd be thrown out of the South.
Yes, question, I agree.
Louisiana isn't really like Louisiana is its own entity. Like there's the South and there's Florida and.
Louisiana own country. Yeah, no doubt. What was the.
Experience like getting acclimated to here being in Notre Dame for.
So long, Well, it was definitely a change, but it was it was a great change for me in a sense of you know, you're in you know, you're in the Midwest. You know it's certainly Notre Dame was a great experience, But this is so much different relative to the day to day. As you can see, I'm a lot more relaxed. I don't have my tie on today.
It's just a relaxed, comfortable environment. And you know, it's about people, it's about food, it's about football, and at the time in my career, this was just a great stop for me and it's it's been really enjoyable.
What you've been at Cincinnati, Notre Dame now LSU as a head coach. What stuck out about this job that made you leave Notre Dame in the middle of playoff implications? Obviously when you left that was a monster story. Yeah, you kind of talk about that a little bit.
Well, I think that's overblown a little bit. We weren't right in the middle of it. We kind of knew where we were going to be in terms of that. But that's neither here nor there. I think what's most
important was LSU and the leadership Scott Woodward. I had known Scott for quite some time, familiar with him, certainly wanting to be in the SEC look guys to to hear I know, but look, I mean you're talking about each and every week, you know, playing against you know, Saban and smart, and you know, the great teams in this conference. I wanted to be measured by the best
and coming down here and playing against them. I had never done that, and so you know, it was one of those opportunities for me that allowed me to come to a university that had slipped from its standards, you know, having won a national championship in nineteen So the opportunity was there, and then and then agatting a chance to you know, be with the right people.
Well made it the most difficult leaving Notre Dame, and after building such a.
Other players, it's the players, you know, It's always about, you know, the relationships that you have with players, and that's always the most difficult because, look, you never leave on your term. It's always somebody else that dictates the timeline. I don't dictate the timeline. It's it's the other school. It's the other university that dictates timeline. So you never get to say I'm leaving when I want to leave.
And so that's what makes it difficult. And every stop along the way that I've left, it's never been a great time. But if you're making that decision to leave, the most difficult is the relationships that you have with your players.
Talk about the development of football in high school in the South, because it seems like programs like Alabama, programs like LSU, you guys just have an immaculate amount of talent.
Always like, what are they feeding them? What's going on?
Lack of distractions, right, you know, they're not sitting in front of you know, PlayStations. You know, there's not a lot of other things that take them away from field sports. They're outside playing for the most part, and you know, whether it's being involved in football or track and field or you know training, they're involved in this game and it's something that you know they can do year round. The weather obviously has a lot to do with it,
the ability to play spring football. All of those things, although they seem small when you add them all up, each one of them contributes to really good high school football, really good feeder systems relative to you know, colleges that are down here, and in particular, kids grow up wanting to play at the flagship school and there's not a
lot of state universities that have that. Right, maybe Ohio State and LSU benefit the most from in state where I want to go play for the buck guys I want to go play for the Tigers.
And because of that, it makes for really good recruiter.
You do feel it walking around, like when we were walking around and seeing Mike the Tiger and then kind of walking around the basketball arena and everything else, like you just feel everybody walk around, kids are on field trips, like it just feels like people live for sports at LSU.
No doubt.
And look, I mean, and it couldn't probably come together any better. Right Our baseball team's number one in the country, you know, they had fourteen thousand. You know, our women's basketball, you know, certainly softball, track and fields one and two. I mean, it is about not just one sport here.
It's all of those sports are looking to win championships and you can feel it, and look, the bar is high, you know, and because of that, I think it brings everybody up when it comes to, you know, the expectations.
Yeah, obviously keeping the players in Louisiana. Everybody from Louisiana wants to be here. When you go to these other states like these California, Texas, these other big time states for recruiting, how is it adjusting to like the culture down here for those guys that maybe come on the West Coast or different parts of the country.
Yeah, you know, I don't know that it so I'll even take myself right. People talked, you know, probably for the first two weeks when I took the job, how's he going to adapt to the culture? How's he going to adapt? So what is culture? Culture is standards, you know, a way of life. And to me, what you had to adapt to here was simply the weather. You know, the foods. I love the food. I'm originally from Massachusetts.
I grew up on Cape God. I love seafood, right, I didn't get much of that in the Midwest, so here it was great to get back to that kind of seafood. And but it's really weather. Because people are friendly and they love football. So if you like that, there's not a big change relative to that. It's it's really just about, you know, being comfortable with the standards, and the standards are about excellence, and I think that that's an easy one for me.
Having a little fun and talking about getting acclimated to the culture. In that first couple of weeks, we again having fun. In those first couple weeks, you went to a basketball game, the accent is family. How much fun did everybody in the building have surrounding that? And did you try to fake an accent to say fames?
Oh, I mean, who would, Like, that's the stupidest thing to try to do.
I think I would try to do that.
Would I would try to do it every single day.
When you have a Boston accent, I mean, and you're in the Midwest and then you go down South, You're you're going to be all messed up anyway, And and I think I have a bit of a strange accent anyway, So add another one.
I think it's it's it's crazy anyway.
So so you're claiming we routed the system a little bit, you're thrown off. I mean a lot of people from the South and you might have caught a couple of things and deciding you be a little nervous not do it too. We people in Nashville, they start talking Southern to me.
I started people, and you start hearing family.
Yeah, I mean it's almost like that's natural, that's how you say it. And I'm just trying to be like everybody else. And then throw your boss that accent in there too, And heck, I couldn't tell you what's coming out of my mouth.
Little boss ocasion, Yeah, little boss, Yeah, You've had so much success as a head coach. I remember twenty twelve, there's a lot of talk and speculation about you leaving Notre Dame and going to the NFL, and you decided not to do that. What came into that decision making of wanting to stay in the college football.
Yeah, I think it was the decentralization of the pro game, where you know, I've been used to my whole life, like the old kind of Bill Parcells quote, you know, shop for the groceries and cook the meal. You know, you don't do that in the NFL, especially. You know, the time that I would have been going, I would have been not handling the roster. I would not have been the GM. I would have been simply the football coach.
And I've been used to handling the scholarships and making final decisions on you know, who was getting the final say relative to anything that happened in the program. And when you go to the NFL, you lose a lot of that control. And not that I'm a control freak, as much as I just felt like I had all of those things at Notre Dame, and I was going to give all that up, and I just wasn't ready to do that.
Do you think there's ever a time you see yourself becoming an NFL head coach?
No, I'm all in, yeah, this is it.
I love what I do because I've refound the if that's a word, the relationships with the players, and I enjoy that too much. And you know, not being a play caller anymore, I'm not in meetings. I don't have to sit in those long meetings, so I can be downstairs, I could be in the training room, I can eat with the guys, and it just allows you that opportunity to be with the players more.
What does that scalability look like? Because you could be a head coach who's very invested in offense or defense or everything else, and when you've kind of scaled yourself to surround yourself with these minds around you, like, what does that look like?
Fix football?
I mean, fix the issues that the coordinators need help with. I've been on both sides of the ball. I've been a coordinator on offense and defensive, call players on both sides of the ball. So I think just being available to fix any issues that we might have. Be available for those guys. We meet every day, you know, with
the coordinators. So for me, if there are any particular issues that crop up, be a sounding ward, be there with hey, experience, this is my thirty second year being a head coach, and maybe just lend a little bit of that experience to those guys and help them along the way.
When you were first kind of going through that transition too, is a hard kind of like letting go oh being a coordinator and be like, all right, let me just let me just trust them and not let me buy my tongue.
It's got to be Yeah, I don't know that the trust was the issue. It was finding the right outlets. In other words, you know, where can I find myself during the day doing the things that I was used to doing scripting and you.
Know, I got seven on seven to do.
I've got to script these you know, plays and team and so, you know, really filling in those voids, and it really was filled in with what my why is, and that is spending more time in the training room, you know, spending more time you know with the players, support staff, making sure that we've got the right things in place for our players in terms of recovery, and so that was trying to find that niche early on and where that void would be filled was the hardest part.
When these guys from high school are coming into college. What are the pillars that you stand on as far as your program goes and how do you implement that on guys that are seventeen eighteen years old, especially the early en roll league guys.
Yeah, consistency and approach in terms of of the day to day in terms of you know, look, this is about graduating our players and player for championships.
How do we get you there?
And really working on what are those things that will help you, Like attention to detail, you know, you know, having good habits, being reliable. You've been in an NFL locker room. I mean what does everybody want? Just being on time? You know, be a good teammate. You know, those are standards that are not that hard, and sometimes
we make it harder than it is. So really just giving them the basic principles of you know, good values on a day to day basis and being consistent with it and making sure that we apply those every single day, and those are really the most important.
I know. We have to let you go here soon because you're about to go to a sports a sports science media and that's what I want to ask you about, Like, how do you implement the sports science because when we were talking about before the before the podcast, we're talking about how it's misunderstanding everything else. How do you use sports science as a tool and not the end all be all, like some people can kind of misconsure or look into it too much.
Yeah, So my job is to put together in this building a high performance team for our student athletes, right, and so that high performance team touches our student athletes from you know, mental performance training, to nutrition, to strength and conditioning, you know, to understanding what their sleep patterns are with aura and and so all of that touches them. But we want it to be collaborative, right, We want
them all working together, not separately. So sports science is that delivery system for human performance, and sometimes they're all working in separate areas and they don't want to share their work, and so just getting them under one umbrella and making sure that they're working together cohesively, and I think that that's a competitive advantage. And if you're able to do that and deliver it, the right way. I think those are things that you can do to be just a step ahead.
I love that which We appreciate your time. Thanks, amazing facility. Everything is top nauseating. We are in the hospitality.
Is great to spend some time with you guys. We look forward to seeing it in the fall.
Ye yes, we would love that to a night game, to come to a night game.
It lives up to the hype. I'm going to tell you that we can. We can just let you know we're in.
You made a big mistake offering that.
Thanks guys,