It’s one thing to accidentally tack on a few extra dollars to an employees salary through miscalculating hours, but when an SEC football program overpays by about $1 million, people are going to notice.
That’s exactly what happened over at LSU, where the Louisiana Legislative Auditor recently determined that the program overpaid head coach Brian Kelly by $1 million due to “erroneous double-payments.”
A 30-page report from the auditor reveals that the Tigers made payments to both Kelly and an LLC controlled by Kelly. Per the report, the school has since adjusted Kelly’s pay schedule to recoup the missing money by the end of this fiscal year.
That isn’t to say that LSU is strapped for cash after the error though. Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger pointed out that the auditor’s report also mentions that the school made a profit of over $35 million in 2022 – a 19-percent increase from the previous year.
So it appears that LSU literally has more money than it knows how to spend right now. That might explain why the school was so quick to give Kelly an historic 10-year, $95 million contract at the end of the 2021 season.
The rewards were big and immediate for LSU though. Kelly led the Tigers to the SEC Championship Game in his first year at the helm and could have had them in the College Football Playoff as the first-ever two-loss team if they had found a way to beat Texas A&M and Georgia at the end of the year.
Expectations are always high in Baton Rouge but right now it looks like Kelly is meeting and exceeding them by leaps and bounds.
That doesn’t mean LSU is just going to let him pocket an extra $1 million though.