The new era of college football is all about adding somewhat proven players from the NCAA Transfer Portal. The assistant coaches that head coaches land in the off-season lately have not been as big in the news as the portal transactions.
After signing 16 players from the portal and garnering the nation’s No. 1 ranking by 247sports.com, LSU coach Brian Kelly just added his first new assistant coach since the end of the 2024 season this week. He has hired Grambling special teams coordinator Aman Anand to be LSU’s special teams coordinator. And Anand has one of the most unique coaching histories in LSU football history.
Anand will replace LSU special teams coordinator/tight ends coach Slade Nagle, who left after the 2024 season for a promotion as offensive coordinator at Houston.
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Anand may also coach tight ends, or Kelly will give that assignment to another present assistant coach. Tight ends coach is usually an entry level position for a young assistant and often involves recruiting as well. An assistant who only coaches tight ends obviously only coaches a few players.
Anand, who apparently is in his early-to-mid 30s, has been on the lower end of assistant coaching for more than a decade – not the usual background of an LSU hire. He was at Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) Grambling for one season as special teams coordinator after one season as running backs coach and special teams coordinator at FCS Texas Southern.
Before that, Anand was closer to the big time at Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) Baylor in the Big 12 in the 2020 through 2022 seasons, but as a quality control coach working with special teams, which is not considered a main line assistant coach. Anand was in a similar role at Penn State in 2019.
Anand, a native of Falls Church, Virginia, was a graduate assistant coach for four seasons – Memphis in 2018, Utah State in 2016 and ’17 and Northern Arizona in 2015. Most assistant coaches in college football serve only one or two seasons as a graduate assistant.
But maybe Kelly sees a diamond in the rough in Anand, who was a student assistant coach from 2012-14 at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, where he received an undergraduate degree in interdisciplinary studies and a Master’s in educational leadership.
The South Dakota Mines Hardrockers are a Division II football program in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference with such schools as Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State Pueblo, Adams State, Fort Lewis, Chadron State and Adams State.
Anand could be a coach on the rise, of late, though, and maybe Kelly sees that. In 2022, FootballScoop.com named him to its Minority Watch List as nominated by then-Baylor special teams coordinator and safeties coach Matt Powledge, who is now the Bears’ defensive coordinator. Anand also received “strong endorsements from multiple other coaches,” the FootballScoop.com story said, and added, “Research showed Anand is widely seen as a rising member of the profession.”
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