Voted Yet? LSU Football Players Have Or Will, Thanks To Ex-Democratic Party Aide Brian Kelly

GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor

The son of an alderman in Chelsea, Massachusetts, across Mystic River from Boston, there was a time when LSU football coach Brian Kelly considered a career in politics and/or government, or the CIA.

A political science graduate in 1983 from Assumption College in Worcester, Mass., where he was also a linebacker and captain of the football team, Kelly was accepted into graduate school to study international affairs at American University in Washington D.C.

At the time, he could’ve been confused for Matt Damon, a Cambridge, Mass., native who became an actor. Also at that time, Kelly worked for Massachusetts Democrat state senator Gerry D’Amico of Worcester, which led to him working on the Massachusetts portion of the 1984 presidential campaign of Democrat U.S. Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. He worked with media in the Boston area and drove Hart around. Hart lost the nomination to Walter Mondale, who lost the presidential election to incumbent Ronald Reagan.

Kelly soon decided to get into coaching instead, and the rest is history. His No. 14 Tigers (6-2, 3-1 Southeastern Conference) host No. 11 Alabama (6-2, 3-2 SEC) on Saturday night (6:30, ABC) in what amounts to a College Football Playoff run-off of sorts in the new 12-team format. The first CFP rankings will be on tonight at 6 p.m. on ESPN as the presidential voting nears its end.

But Kelly’s political roots still run strong. Early this season, he helped organize through LSU’s non-partisan student Geaux Vote organization to get his players to register to vote and to vote today in the presidential election between Republican nominee and former president Donald Trump and vice-president Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, as well as in the local elections.

“We took the time to ask them to vote and register to vote,” Kelly said at his weekly press conference Monday. “So, my expectations are that they will. They’re pretty tuned into how important this election is and every election. When we brought in Geaux Vote, they talked not only about the presidential election, but how important the local elections are that can impact your communities and how important they are in terms of things that are important to you.”

Kelly helped get his players to vote at his previous head coaching job at Notre Dame as well and at previous stops.

“This was not kind of just, ‘Hey, go out and vote,'” Kelly said. “We spent time with our players making sure they understood the impact at grass roots levels of how important it is to vote.”