Now that the Brian Kelly era at LSU is over, every analyst in the business is lining up to explain why it was never going to work. That includes Josh Pate, who loves to fashion himself as the voice of reason in the sport. But when Kelly left Notre Dame for the Bayou Bengals, Pate sang a very different story.
The college football analyst has gone all in this past week by laying out his case for why Kelly was a bad hire. Why his time at LSU was well past done, and that's led internet sleuths to surface Pate's take when Kelly first took the job with the SEC school.
In November of 2021, Pate talked about the former Notre Dame coach and why the Brian Kelly hiring was such a good one for LSU. He posted his take on the LSU 247Sports page.
Notre Dame fans enjoy some sweet Brian Kelly hindsight
I have kept an eye on Notre Dame since Brian Kelly left. It is better off, @JoshPateCFB pic.twitter.com/8CtcScJbl1
— Oliver VanDervoort (@itmeolliev) October 28, 2025
Along the way, Pate made it clear he believed Tigers fans should be "over the moon" excited about the hire. He added that there was no logical reason for anyone not to agree with him.
In talking about the move, the college football analyst added that he felt as though Kelly was very limited in what he could accomplish at Notre Dame compared to LSU. "Brian Kelly has essentially been trying to compete in the Daytona 500 with a Prius given the limitations at ND relative to CFB's tier one."
The pièce de résistance was when Pate said that people need only to watch what the Fighting Irish program looks like after Kelly leaves. I think everyone in South Bend can answer that one.
Four years later, Pate was on his show talking about how Kelly was checked out long before he got fired, and he was never a fit coming over from Notre Dame. What a difference four years makes.