This is one of the craziest things we’ve ever seen and we’re trying to figure out how it could possibly have happened. But…

UPDATE: After a divorce petition was filed this week, a source in the LSU athletic department says Brian Kelly and his wife have reconciled and will seek to have the case withdrawn from the courts.https://t.co/BXh2iF2Ibx

— WBRZ News (@WBRZ) February 10, 2023

It seems something was filed in court in Baton Rouge, and if so that would be the start of a story.

Except Brian Kelly is LSU’s football coach, which means he has pretty much the entire LSU sports information department working for him. Meaning that for something like this you’d expect that going to SID and asking, “Hey, what’s up with this proceeding that was filed at the court?” and waiting for a comment would be good practice.

You really, really don’t want to run out with a screaming headline that Brian Kelly is filing for divorce from his wife and have this happen…

https://twitter.com/1grace_/status/1623864499034898434

Ouch. Grace is the daughter.

In fact, all three of the Kelly kids have publicly repudiated the report.

But here’s the thing – WBRZ does have a defense here.

Because apparently something was filed on Feb. 6, but now the word is the Kellys have reconciled. Which was an awfully quick reconciliation.

Not hard to look up. pic.twitter.com/1bk1qhS7Cl

— Marcel (@christopmarcel) February 10, 2023

This whole thing is more than a little disconcerting, seeing as though Kelly’s predecessor Ed Orgeron filed for divorce just after the 2019 national championship season. The next thing anybody knew Orgeron was having his picture taken with young women and it was clear he was chasing skirts up and down the Gulf Coast. LSU’s football program went straight down the tubes after that.

In fact, marital instability seems to be a tradition among LSU football coaches. Since 1987, Mike Archer and Gerry DiNardo are the only two LSU coaches we can’t remember hearing stories about, and this would make the fourth straight LSU head football coach with a shaky marriage.

Then again, it’s a high-profile, high-pressure job, and those can be killers on family life.

The good news is that at least it looks like the Kellys will stick things out, at least for now, and perhaps a lesson was learned.

In WBRZ’s case the lesson might be that sometimes the rush to break a story isn’t worth it. Nobody really wants to know that Brian Kelly is filing for a divorce. Maybe don’t run with the story until LSU’s sports information department gives an official confirmation.

And in Kelly’s case, don’t file for divorce unless you’re sure that’s what you want to do. Now everybody has seen your dirty laundry, and it’s none of our business – or shouldn’t be.

This strange story coming on the heels of news that LSU overpaid Kelly to the tune of a million dollars in his first year, the men’s basketball team failing to win a game in 2023, which has lots of fans questioning whether Matt McMahon isn’t a disaster of a hire (something we’re struggling to understand; McMahon’s resume is not that of an incompetent, and yet his team is horrendous) and the very peculiar demand being made at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting that the basketball court at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center which was just recently named for Dale Brown be renamed to include former women’s coach Sue Gunter and we’re struggling to understand where this is coming from when nobody seems to think it’s a good idea…all of it begins to give off the impression that there is chaos within the athletic department.

And there shouldn’t be. A Scott Woodward athletic department is not supposed to be chaotic.

So is chaos something endemic to LSU and it can’t be fixed? Is it a function of the university’s overall leadership?

We’ll pull back the reins on that question at this point. But this isn’t a great week at LSU – whether it’s also a bad week for WBRZ-TV or not.