As everyone from former U.S. president Richard Nixon to various sports figures has learned over the years, it’s much harder to dispute a claim when there’s a tape of it. The latest sports figure to try and claim they didn’t say something is LSU head football coach Brian Kelly, who made that claim Tuesday about his widely-circulated “We’re going to go beat the heck out of Florida State” remark last week. (The then-No. 6 Tigers would lose that game to the then-No.8 Seminoles 45-24 Sunday.)
“That’s not something I would ever say.” @LSUfootball Brian Kelly on the “we’re going to beat the heck out of Florida State” quote that was circulated throughout last week.
Kelly says he has the utmost respect for Florida State and all of #LSU opponents.
— Jacques Doucet (@JacquesDoucet) September 5, 2023
Here’s the full quote Kelly offered Tuesday via Koki Riley of Lafayette, LA’s The Daily Advertiser:
After Florida State squashed LSU 45-24 in Orlando on Sunday to open the Tigers’ season, Kelly claims that his comments from Thursday were “not something that I would ever say.”
“I think you all know me. I’m pretty careful with what I say and how I said it. Never have I been cavalier or disrespectful to an opponent in my 33 years,” Kelly said on Tuesday. “So if somebody wants to prop up a comment and inflate it into something that it is not, that’s what social media is about today.
“I have nothing but the utmost respect for coach (Mike) Norvell. I know who the opponent was. It’s just not in my background or nature to make those kinds of comments.”
But Kelly did make those comments, and in a very public forum. He did so on his coach’s radio show last Thursday in response to a question from LSU radio play-by-play voice Chris Blair about the year-over-year efficiency of practices now that Kelly’s in his second year at LSU and about the coaching approach now being about “developing the players.” As part of a more extended response, Kelly said, “We’re going to beat the heck out of Florida State.”
Blair’s question starts at 12:10 of the whole show audio on LSU’s coach’s show page here, with the specific “We’re going to beat the heck out of Florida State” coming around 14:00 and drawing cheers from the live audience at TJ Ribs. The entire exchange can also be heard in this audio:
Here’s the complete response:
“I think we’re in a really good position in Year 2. Look, I will say that there are some areas that still need to be improved. We’re going to take 15 freshmen on this trip and 14 transfers, so nearly 40 percent of this travel roster are going to go overnight for the first time with LSU, and that’s not a disclaimer of any kind. We’re going to go beat the heck out of Florida State. But what I’m saying is, we’re still developing our football team with new players, freshman players, transfer players. We’re still in that process of developing, and it’s only going to get better as we continue to develop the program. So it’s pretty exciting from my perspective that where we sit here, going into Year 2, the future’s pretty bright. If I was buying a stock, I’d buy some LSU football stock.”
The season-long impact of this defeat for the Tigers remains to be seen, but this particular blowout loss would not have provided a great return on investment if people had bought LSU stocks. So maybe don’t take stock tips from Kelly. But beyond that, Kelly’s “not something that I would ever say” and “not in my background or nature to make those kinds of comments” are just factually incorrect. Kelly irrevocably said exactly that and did so in his own safe and friendly forum, and that can be confirmed merely by accessing the coaches’ show page on LSU’s official website.
There may be more of an argument about the context of the quote, but even there, Kelly doesn’t have a lot going for him. Elsewhere in his remarks Tuesday, he attempted to blame “social media” and attempts to “prop up a comment and inflate it into something that it is not,” which is saying he was taken out of context. But he wasn’t. Yes, he said that in a discussion about his team still developing, and yes, he did seemingly as a way to walk back suggestions he was making excuses and setting low expectations with his remarks about his team’s youth and new players, but the “We’re going to go beat the heck out of Florida State” line was not offered as a joke.
And yes, that’s the only part of that quote that got initially written up and tweeted, including by Riley of the Advertiser (whose tweet was embedded in many stories). But it’s the most newsworthy part of that quote. The relaying of that quote was newsworthy, and the additional context Kelly offered didn’t change much. It was a bold prediction of what the Tigers would do. And there’s nothing wrong with a coach saying that, but they should then stand by it. And this got some attention pregame and even more after LSU’s humiliating defeat.
And this isn’t an actual access crackdown like some things we’ve seen in college football, and it’s pretty lame of Kelly to try and disavow a comment he definitively made that was relayed with all the context it particularly needed. He still wouldn’t be right if he’d just complained about the context, but he’d at least have more of an argument. But “not something that I would ever say” and “just not in my background or nature to make those kinds of comments” call the comment into dispute, putting an unnecessary target on the media who fairly and accurately relayed the initial statement. And they’re not the ones who lost by 21 points to the Seminoles, so Kelly is perhaps focusing on the wrong targets after this loss.
