Can Brian Kelly and LSU win it all?
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Andrea Adelson
BATON ROUGE, La. — There is a quiet anticipation inside the newly expanded LSU football operations center, even though the season is still months away. In the weight room, players go through the summer conditioning program, hollering encouragement and straining to hit unique benchmarks assigned to them. They have a singular focus taking hold.
On the screens around them, when they break down the end of a workout or when they text each other in group chats, all they see is “1-0.” Everyone in the building knows what that means: Beat Clemson in the season opener.
Upstairs, Ya’el Lofton bustles about her desk, waiting for coach Brian Kelly to arrive. Lofton has worked at LSU for more than 35 years — including nearly 25 as the executive assistant to the head coach. “You know,” she says with a big smile, “every head coach I have worked for has won a national championship.”
Her quiet anticipation, of course, is for Kelly to join Nick Saban, Les Miles and Ed Orgeron as a national champion. LSU went into the transfer portal, flush with more money to spend, and brought in one of the top classes in the country. Veteran quarterback Garrett Nussmeier returns, along with a more experienced defensive staff.
Every move has been calculated and points to this being a championship-or-bust season. But that all starts Aug. 30. LSU has never won an opener under Kelly. In fact, the Tigers have begun each of their past five seasons with a loss. So Kelly isn’t talking about the end of the season. He is just talking about the beginning.
“I’ve never really been, ‘It’s all or nothing,'” Kelly says. “This year is a change in our philosophy, in that we have to focus on Clemson. Our focus has to be playing our very best in that first week.”
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WHEN KELLY HELD his first team meeting in January, he had the newcomers — transfers and early enrollee freshmen — introduce themselves and explain why they wanted to come to LSU. Kelly says every transfer said the same thing: “I’m here to win a championship.”
As Kelly sees it, this is the first time since his surprise move from Notre Dame to LSU four years ago that he has had everything in place to compete for a championship: more financial support, university alignment, a more experienced staff, a culture built by players he has helped develop and transfers ready to fill the obvious holes.
When asked whether the roster and staff he has assembled for this year is one that can win a title, Kelly says yes. But he also throws in a caveat or two.
“It’s been a process, right?” Kelly says. “It’s like anything else. It takes a little bit of time. This state relies on success. The governor told me the other night their best Mondays are after a win. We all know what that means and the expectations of it. But I stay focused on the process of building it.”
Kelly contended for an SEC title in Year 1 in 2022 with young upstart quarterback (and future Heisman Trophy winner) Jayden Daniels, but he thinks that might have created unreasonable outside expectations for his program. Kelly says that season did not change the trajectory of the program under his leadership.
“Those are the people that don’t have enough information,” Kelly says. “They’re just reacting emotionally, and you’re going to have that, and that’s great. We love that passion. With that passion comes unrealistic thoughts.”
LSU won 10 games again in 2023, but despite Daniels’ best efforts, the Tigers fell short of another SEC championship game appearance due to its poor defense. LSU ranked No. 105 in the country in total defense that season, allowing a whopping 6.14 yards per play and 28 points per game. Kelly revamped the entire defensive staff but saw mixed results in 2024 under Blake Baker.
That, combined with inconsistent play from Nussmeier, led to a 9-4 season and questions about whether Kelly was inching closer to hot seat territory. The low point came in a 42-13 home loss to Alabama in November, when a smattering of fans booed Kelly off the field and shouted for him to find a way out of Baton Rouge.
Afterward, Kelly said his team “didn’t play to the standard of LSU football.”
Baker returns, more seasoned and experienced. But there are other reasons Kelly feels LSU might meet that high historical standard this season. First, he believes the roster and culture are in much better shape. Second, LSU was far more aggressive in the transfer portal.
“We weren’t committed to going into the portal in the manner that we were this year, and that commitment is in all areas,” Kelly says. “It’s a financial commitment. … Quite frankly, we weren’t ready as a program to immerse ourselves deeply into the portal up until this year.
“The foundation was still being built, and you need a strong culture. When you go into the portal and you bring in 13, 14 guys, they immediately immerse themselves into something that’s established. We still needed another coat of paint, and so the timing was right, the commitment was better, and we clearly knew where our holes were that we needed to address. This was much more about fitting the culture.”
The financial commitment is a significant one. Kelly and his wife, Paqui, decided to match donations up to $1 million for the football team’s name, image and likeness efforts. Kelly says after he made that announcement in March, 1,600 donors gave money to LSU.
As a result of a more aggressive approach to the portal, LSU landed one of the best transfer classes in the country: two top-five wide receivers (Barion Brown and Nic Anderson), the No. 1 cornerback (Mansoor Delane), the No. 1 defensive end (Pat Payton), two of the best interior linemen (Braelin Moore, Josh Thompson) and one of the top tight ends in Oklahoma transfer Bauer Sharp.
LSU also signed anticipated defensive difference-makers Jack Pyburn, Jimari Butler and defensive tackle Sydir Mitchell. In addition, they had 13 early enrollees, including No. 1 cornerback DJ Pickett. Harold Perkins Jr., a Freshman All-American in 2022 who missed much of last season with a torn ACL, is expected to be healthy for the opener.
But even given all the moves LSU has made, Kelly says he does not feel any more pressure to deliver a championship in 2025.
“What it really means is that LSU football is among the elite,” Kelly says. “Only one team goes home with that championship. [The fans] want to do it every year. But they want an elite football team. They want one that is competing for a championship. 9-4 is not competing for a championship. You’re out of the discussion when you lose your third game. And so it’s my job to put this program back in elite status.”
Kelly is asked whether the program is at elite status now.
“We’ll go find out,” he says.
THAT BRINGS US back to Clemson. LSU has not won a season opener since 2019, the year Joe Burrow led the Tigers to their last national championship. The past three opening losses, under Kelly, came in neutral site, marquee national spotlight games — two to Florida State and one to USC last season, when the Trojans scored the winning touchdown with eight seconds remaining.
Nussmeier was the quarterback then, and he will be the quarterback again when LSU plays Clemson for the first time since … the national title game in 2020. He returned for a final season with the Tigers to bring a national championship back to LSU. But if that is the end goal, beating Clemson is the first goal.
“In the past, we maybe have looked too far forward at the season, so I think that’s been a very good mind switch for us,” Nussmeier said. “Coach Kelly has made it very clear what our mindset is going into Week 1.
“I haven’t seen that since I’ve been here. When you’re at LSU, you have expectations. Everybody talks about, ‘Can LSU win the national championship?’ It’s not, ‘Can LSU make a bowl game?’ So while we acknowledge, yes, our goal is to win a national championship, it starts with beating Clemson Week 1.”
Given the 12-team College Football Playoff, a loss to Clemson would not automatically eliminate LSU from championship contention. But the program does not want to start the season with doubts. Getting out of the gate with a win would be huge.
“Once we accomplish that goal, that momentum that we’re going to get from that win, who knows where it leads us,” Sharp said.
For his part, Kelly has his own quiet confidence about the season. As Kelly has pointed out, he has won everywhere he has been, from Division II Grand Valley State to Notre Dame. When he left the Irish, he was the program’s all-time winningest coach.
When he got to LSU, he told The Associated Press, “I want to be in an environment where I have the resources to win a national championship,” a statement that resurfaced this past season after Notre Dame made it to the national title game, while Kelly has yet to get there with the Tigers.
The resources now seem to be in place. In addition to the renewed financial commitment and aggressive portal push, LSU expanded its operations center last year with a new recovery suite that includes everything from nutrition and fueling stations, a reimagined athletic training and rehab area, plus a hydrotherapy suite and float tanks designed to help players “achieve deep relaxation and mental clarity.”
Whether that translates into a championship is still to be determined. In a few weeks, the quiet anticipation will grow more urgent as practices begin and the season inches closer to that very first goal: Beat Clemson and get to 1-0.
It’s 2025 MLB All-Star Home Run Derby day in Atlanta!
Some of the most dynamic home run hitters in baseball will be taking aim at the Truist Park stands on Monday (8 p.m. ET on ESPN) in one of the most anticipated events of the summer.
While the prospect of a back-to-back champion is out of the picture — 2024 winner Teoscar Hernandez is not a part of this year’s field — a number of exciting stars will be taking the field, including Atlanta’s own Matt Olson, who replaced Ronald Acuna Jr. just three days before the event. Will Olson make a run in front of his home crowd? Will Cal Raleigh show off the power that led to 38 home runs in the first half? Or will one of the younger participants take the title?
We have your one-stop shop for everything Derby related, from predictions to live updates once we get underway to analysis and takeaways at the night’s end.
MLB Home Run Derby field
Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners (38 home runs in 2025)
James Wood, Washington Nationals (24)
Junior Caminero, Tampa Bay Rays (23)
Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins (21)
Brent Rooker, Athletics (20)
Matt Olson, Atlanta Braves (17)
Jazz Chisholm Jr., New York Yankees (17)
Oneil Cruz, Pittsburgh Pirates (16)
Live updates
Who is going to win the Derby and who will be the runner-up?
Jeff Passan: Raleigh. His swing is perfect for the Derby: He leads MLB this season in both pull percentage and fly ball percentage, so it’s not as if he needs to recalibrate it to succeed. He has also become a prolific hitter from the right side this season — 16 home runs in 102 at-bats — and his ability to switch between right- and left-handed pitching offers a potential advantage. No switch-hitter (or catcher for that matter) has won a Home Run Derby. The Big Dumper is primed to be the first, beating Buxton in the finals.
Alden Gonzalez: Cruz. He might be wildly inconsistent at this point in his career, but he is perfect for the Derby — young enough to possess the stamina required for a taxing event that could become exhausting in the Atlanta heat; left-handed, in a ballpark where the ball carries out better to right field; and, most importantly, capable of hitting balls at incomprehensible velocities. Raleigh will put on a good show from both sides of the plate but will come in second.
Buster Olney: Olson. He is effectively pinch-hitting for Acuna, and because he received word in the past 72 hours of his participation, he hasn’t had the practice rounds that the other competitors have been going through. But he’s the only person in this group who has done the Derby before, which means he has experienced the accelerated pace, adrenaline and push of the crowd.
His pitcher, Eddie Perez, knows something about performing in a full stadium in Atlanta. And, as Olson acknowledged in a conversation Sunday, the park generally favors left-handed hitters because of the larger distances that right-handed hitters must cover in left field.
Jesse Rogers: Olson. Home-field advantage will mean something this year as hitting in 90-plus degree heat and humidity will be an extra challenge in Atlanta. Olson understands that and can pace himself accordingly. Plus, he was a late addition. He has got nothing to lose. He’ll outlast the young bucks in the field. And I’m not putting Raleigh any lower than second — his first half screams that he’ll be in the finals against Olson.
Jorge Castillo: Wood. His mammoth power isn’t disputed — he can jack baseballs to all fields. But the slight defect in his power package is that he doesn’t hit the ball in the air nearly as often as a typical slugger. Wood ranks 126th out of 155 qualified hitters across the majors in fly ball percentage. And he still has swatted 24 home runs this season. So, in an event where he’s going to do everything he can to lift baseballs, hitting fly balls won’t be an issue, and Wood is going to show off that gigantic power en route to a victory over Cruz in the finals.
Who will hit the longest home run of the night — and how far?
Passan: Cruz hits the ball harder than anyone in baseball history. He’s the choice here, at 493 feet.
Gonzalez: If you exclude the Coors Field version, there have been just six Statcast-era Derby home runs that have traveled 497-plus feet. They were compiled by two men: Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. James Wood — all 6-foot-7, 234 pounds of him — will become the third.
Olney: James Wood has the easy Stanton- and Judge-type power, and he will clear the Chophouse with the longest homer. Let’s say 497 feet.
Rogers: Hopefully he doesn’t injure himself doing it, but Buxton will break out his massive strength and crush a ball at least 505 feet. I don’t see him advancing far in the event, but for one swing, he’ll own the night.
Castillo: Cruz hits baseballs hard and far. He’ll crush a few bombs, and one will reach an even 500 feet.
Who is the one slugger fans will know much better after the Derby?
Passan: Buxton capped his first half with a cycle on Saturday, and he’ll carry that into the Derby, where he will remind the world why he was baseball’s No. 1 prospect in 2015. Buxton’s talent has never been in question, just his health. And with his body feeling right, he has the opportunity to put on a show fans won’t soon forget.
Olney: Caminero isn’t a big name and wasn’t a high-end prospect like Wood was earlier in his career. Just 3½ years ago, Caminero was dealt to the Rays by the Cleveland Guardians in a relatively minor November trade for pitcher Tobias Myers. But since then, he has refined his ability to cover inside pitches and is blossoming this year into a player with ridiculous power. He won’t win the Derby, but he’ll open some eyes.
What’s the one moment we’ll all be talking about long after this Derby ends?
Gonzalez: The incredible distances and velocities that will be reached, particularly by Wood, Cruz, Caminero, Raleigh and Buxton. The hot, humid weather at Truist Park will only aid the mind-blowing power that will be on display Monday night.
Rogers: The exhaustion on the hitter’s faces, swinging for home run after home run in the heat and humidity of Hot-lanta!
Castillo: Cruz’s 500-foot blast and a bunch of other lasers he hits in the first two rounds before running out of gas in the finals.
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