After two games with Rick Stockstill as the interim head coach, the Florida State administration is expected to begin the preliminary stages of the coaching search. Stockstill has found some success despite difficult circumstances, but a new era is coming to Tallahassee, and there is a lot that weighs on the Seminoles' hiring the right candidate.
Naturally, the retread market has been big with jobs like Florida State and Maryland opening up, which are two programs that have the resources to be far more competitive. One name that has emerged for both jobs is former Notre Dame and LSU coach Brian Kelly, who is not exactly the most thrilling candidate.
Kelly was fired from his job with LSU during the 2025 season after the team was essentially eliminated from playoff contention. Kelly struggled to find a coaching gig after his firing, and now has begun campaigning for an opportunity.
Kelly previously praised the toughness and strength of Florida State as a program after publicly declaring that he was interested in the job. Kelly should believe so since the Seminoles had a 2-0 record against him during his tenure with the Tigers. Notably, Kelly went 3-1 against Florida during his time in the SEC, which is a program he would need to face if hired in Tallahassee.
There is no denying that Kelly is a talented coach, with a 297-109-2 record at the collegiate level since 1991. Kelly did not lose more than three SEC games in a season, which is something Lane Kiffin has already done in his first year with the program. Kelly additionally made three straight bowl appearances with the Tigers, winning them all.
Two issues would come with hiring Kelly as the next coach, and perhaps the most important issue involves his departure from LSU.
Kelly cannot outrun the past by leading the Florida State Seminoles
For some, a new location might mean a fresh start, but for Kelly, that has not been the case in the past for the coach. Kelly led a Notre Dame program that was regularly ranked very high and consistently playing in big games, and when the coach landed at LSU, the expectations were that the same results would occur in the SEC.
Clearly, that was not the case, and while Kelly did not necessarily do a terrible job with the Tigers, he never reached those expectations, and he was fired during the 2025 season once a College Football Playoff spot was out of reach. Kelly had a playoff-worthy team with the Fighting Irish in each of his final five seasons with the program.
Florida State is not going to hire a coach to take time and methodically rebuild the program into a playoff contender. The expectation is that the next coach immediately brings the team closer to that goal, whether that means finishing the season at the top of the ACC or solely flirting with the idea.
There is no reason to expect that Kelly returns to the most dominant version of himself and commands a far better result in Tallahassee. He established what he is capable of, and Florida State cannot afford to bring him in and receive the same result that LSU did. I will take a nine-win season after the last few, but at some point, the Seminoles need to achieve more than that, and Kelly doesn't have the recent track record to prove he can do that.
LSU paid Kelly $54 million to leave the program, and the decision to hire the coach proved to be the most expensive mistake the administration had made. Florida State understands what it is like to make an expensive mistake with the buyout of coach Mike Norvell, and doing so a second time would put a financial bruise on the program.
What is so wrong about potentially hiring Kelly?
Aside from the fact that Notre Dame further grew in his absence while LSU entered a downward trend, another issue with Kelly comes down to his results on the field. Kelly didn't win enough to bring home anything important with Notre Dame, and then he struggled to win enough to put LSU in a position to contend for anything important. So, why should anyone believe he can do so while likely starting with a bare bones roster in Tallahassee?
You would like to think that Florida State would have a fearsome group willing to stick it out under the next coach, but even so, there will be a significant amount of turnover at the end of the season. With three coaches fired and multiple others likely primed to take on new roles elsewhere, the next coach will have a lot of work to do before actually hitting the field.
Kelly really didn't have much of an issue constructing a roster with SEC funding, but he would undoubtedly have less to work with in Tallahassee, at least at the start. Kelly has flirted with the idea of working through an incentive-based contract so the next program that hires him will have more money to work with, but that still might not be enough.
Then comes the problem with the results he has had on the field, which did not change even with a few very talented Tigers' rosters. During the 2022 season, Kelly lost to Florida State to open the year and then later lost a game to Texas A&M, which proved to be two significant losses the team could not overcome. The same result occurred in 2023, when losses to Florida State, Ole Miss, and Alabama ultimately gave the Tigers limited key wins to work with.
The tipping point was the 2025 season, when Kelly gave programs like Ole Miss and Vanderbilt the ammunition needed to soar in the rankings. LSU did a solid job at winning the games that needed to be won during Kelly's tenure, but the problems all seemed to occur in high-leverage games, which are exactly the type of games the Seminoles want to be winning.
If Kelly were still coaching and had been producing more convincing results, many fans would likely be more receptive to the idea of hiring him, but the coach is only as good as his past results. There is no reason to expect Kelly to perform at a higher level and push Florida State into what has recently become unfamiliar territory.
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