Brian Kelly
The numbers
$10.18M
$10,175,000
USA TODAY salary database, FY2025
$10.18M
$10,175,000
USA TODAY salary database, FY2025
$1.32M
$1,325,000
USA TODAY salary database, FY2025
$53.29M
$53,293,333
USA TODAY salary database, FY2025
These are school-reported contract terms, not realized compensation, and the buyout is a contractual maximum rather than money paid. Source ↗
Status
No longer with the program, effective 2025-10-26. The contract carried a stated buyout of $53.29M; any negotiated settlement replaces that figure once documented.
The fine print
Reported at $275,000 a year for private air travel, possibly routed through the Tiger Athletic Foundation.
“$275,000 per year for private air travel”
Reported by media; primary document not held. This figure has not been read off a contract we hold.
Reported at 50 hours of personal private flying a year under his 2021 LSU agreement.
“fifty hours of private flight travel a year for Kelly's personal use”
Reported by media; primary document not held. This figure has not been read off a contract we hold.
Every clause here is quoted from the document it cites. A clause that cannot be re-checked against the scan is not published.
The flights
Contract grants 50 personal flight hours a year (reported) → Published reporting on LSU Tigers aircraft during this tenure:
A jet clause is eligibility; a tracked flight is evidence; the join is presented as contract-next-to-reporting, never as proof the coach was aboard.
How this page is sourced
Where a contract for this coach is in the corpus, the headline figures are read off that document at the page each card cites, and USA TODAY's figure runs alongside as a cross-check. Where no contract is held, the figures are school-reported contract terms from USA TODAY's coaches salary database for the most recent fiscal year on file. Neither is W-2 compensation, and neither is comparable to Form 990 totals for private schools.
Clause text is transcribed verbatim from the cited document at the cited page. Where a term is attributed to published reporting rather than a document we hold, the card says so explicitly.
Flight reports linked here are attributed to the program and the date, not to a passenger. Nothing on this page claims a coach exercised a clause or was aboard an aircraft.