By JERRY BYRD JR., Journal Sports
The only thing that could get area LSU fans to stop talking about Garth Brooks’ epic concert in Tiger Stadium Saturday night was a Tuesday evening visit by new head football coach Brian Kelly to Walk-On’s Sports Bistreaux in Shreveport.
It was the first leg of Kelly’s tour which will take him across the state talking about LSU football.
Of course it isn’t really Kelly’s tour. The official name is Coaches Caravan ‘22 presented by the Tiger Athletic Foundation. But make no mistake, Kelly was the rock star Tuesday.
And music to the ears of the local audience, Kelly made clear he understands the importance of northwest Louisiana to the LSU football program.
“Our philosophy has got to be about pooling our base in the state of Louisiana,” Kelly said. “Not just south Louisiana. It can’t be (just) New Orleans. It can’t be (just) Baton Rouge. It’s got to be Shreveport. It’s got to be Monroe. It’s got to be the entire state. And that’s a focused effort and that’s my recruiting philosophy in Louisiana.”
It wasn’t his first time in Shreveport playing to a crowd, although when he was head coach at Notre Dame and was here recruiting Evangel’s Jerry Tillery, he played to a much smaller crowd. Kelly referenced Tillery, although not mentioning him by name, when speaking about the kind of student-athlete who will fit well in his program.
“It’s like anything else, they’ve got to fit the profile,” Kelly said. “And the profile for me and it has been for my entire career, I want young men who recognize the value of a degree and they want to play for championships. It’s that simple. Excellence both on and off the field. And they’re here.
“At the other school I was at, Evangel Christian had a great player that I took out of the state of Louisiana. They’re here. You’ve got to come up here and recruit them.”
Besides recruiting football players, Kelly also has experience recruiting coaches familiar with the state of Louisiana. The knowledge his newly-hired assistant coaches have has come in handy during Kelly’s first five months on the job.
“First of all, it was important that we hired coaches that were familiar with the state of Louisiana,” Kelly said. “Joe Sloan was at Ruston and Louisiana Tech for a number of years. He knows this north part of the state really, really well. That’s extremely helpful, obviously. To have a number of guys that have recruited in the state of Louisiana, that was a charge that I needed to make sure we had those coaches.”
And of course, there was talk about the quarterback battle, and where the battle is after spring practice.
“I’m surprised at an earlier event that it wasn’t the first question,” Kelly said. “You know, we’ve been transparent, right, with the kids. We said they would all get an opportunity, and they did.
“We brought in a transfer from Arizona State in Jayden Daniels and he upped the competition level, but I will tell you.Myles Brennan did a great job, Garret Nussmeyer, Walker Howard, all of them competed at a high level. We’re going to go into camp and after we’ve installed the offense, now we can start to move the offense toward their skill set and that’s when the separation will happen. You can never have enough competition at that position, and it should be fun for preseason camp.”
During the summer months, there are things that the quarterbacks can do to improve, and Kelly and his offensive coaching staff will continue to evaluate, but, according to Kelly, there will be no movement in terms of who the starter will be when the Tigers open the season on Sunday, Sept. 4 against Florida State in the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
“I think this is about their strength, their conditioning level, their accountability level to each other,” Kelly said. “I think that continues to build. Their leadership. We want to continue to see them grow. Look, your quarterback, regardless, he’s got to be a leader, so they’ll continue to do that. We’ll observe those things. Look, quarterbacks are going to be throwing with receivers all the time, but I don’t think you really get to see, you know, where there’s a separation until you get into camp.”
The quarterback battle is a problem for another day for Kelly.
“Everything is great,” Kelly answered, when asked by a member of the media how things were going. “We won the spring game so we’re undefeated.”
Photo: by JERRY BYRD
