Well, hello there! It’s Thursday, it’s FOIAball. And it wouldn’t be a Thursday newsletter without a call for you to upgrade to a paid FOIAball subscription.
Why upgrade? Because you still don’t know where Cody Campbell went on vacation in March.
I do. All our other paid subscribers do, too. And I told them not to tell you.
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Introducing… the Brian Kelly 3000
While we all want to stem the rising tide of artificial intelligence, any singular effort one might undertake quickly runs up against the ultimate final boss.
Literally your final boss, the person in charge of your company.
America’s executive class absolutely adores AI, having credulously, breathlessly accepted its panacean pitch.
Because I’m disturbed, I read every dispatch on AI from Axios CEO Jim Vandehei, who recently debuted his new mantra: “Confront what matters. Delete what doesn't. Amplify with AI.”
What does that mean? Nothing! But now, in every job interview, for the rest of your gosh dang life, you are going to be asked, “How do you leverage AI?”
Which is why you have someone like Brian Kelly—who never previously went on an image rehabilitation tour—hopping on a podcast to let the football powers-that-be know he’s integrated Claude into his workflow. What a world.
In a conversation this week with USA Today, the former LSU coach said that, “Every day, I’m trying to do my due diligence using Claude and AI, asking questions to build some of those answers that I think can be helpful for me as I get in front of an athletic director.”
While that quote went viral, the context did not. Naturally, I watched the full interview.
Kelly’s response came when asked about whether college students deserved to be categorized as university employees.
It’s good to know the time away hasn’t dulled his humanity. And awful as that is, university trustees would love to hear a coach cite the computer as a reason to not pay players.
Now, you might be wondering where the FOIA is in today’s FOIAball. Let’s get to that.
That podcast was the second interview Kelly did in recent weeks. Last month, also in USA Today, Kelly dropped a little nugget about his current job status.
According to him, he hasn’t been totally shunned this cycle. Kelly is consulting for several schools, only one of which he mentioned by name: The University of Memphis.
But it appears he’s doing that gig for free. FOIAball requested any contracts or agreements with Kelly for consulting services, and the school told us it had none.
Kelly's original contract with LSU included a "Duty to Mitigate" provision, which meant that his $54 million buyout would be reduced by any salary from “football-related employment.”
We asked LSU if Kelly had informed them of any new income. They didn’t respond.
So Kelly is just eating that Claude Pro subscription himself. Which is a shame. I audit government agencies for a living, and even I’m appalled a consultant isn’t passing that cost along to the state.
But when he gets hired next, he sure can. And probably will. Kelly made it clear he’ll use AI in his next role, saying he already developed a framework going forward.
“There’s some interesting things that I’ve laid down relative to recruiting, profiling, transfer portal, there’s a lot of work you can do. And I think it’s going to have to be part of the next iteration in coaching. You’re going to have to utilize those tools.”
What does an AI-powered transfer portal look like? What would Claude tell Brian Kelly to do in an interview? I did a little role-playing.
I would never do something as galling as pasting a conversation with an LLM in here, but I found the whole thing kind of fun. You can read it or not. But even the fake brain dunked on Brian.
[That question is about dressing for a clandestine interview with the future AD of Wisconsin. Lacking context, it seems like I’m setting him up for a tryst.]
If you are upset that I revealed myself as an AI user, well, I have an excuse. See, I am not just the editor-in-chief of FOIAball. I’m also its CEO. So I need something to tell me how right and good I am.
And given that I just told a bunch of people to read my fun conversation with ChatGPT (jfc, I’m sorry), it appears I’m well on my way to joining America’s utterly insipid media ruling class.
That said, I know people don’t like it. I try to be extremely judicious in my use. So allow me to apologize.
“I tried to call, but it went to voicemail. I want to apologize for the way I handled your question. I'm better than that. I defaulted to immediately defending myself in that situation. Man, it's hard to produce FOIAball. I have so much going on and yet I still prevail. Again, I apologize and will do it publicly tomorrow.”
No, I didn’t use ChatGPT to write that. Those are the lightly edited words of Brian Kelly!
Early on last season, Kelly snapped at a question in a post-game press conference. A few days later, he apologized to the media, adding that he sent the reporter a personal message.
Of course I got that text! What, you thought this whole newsletter was gonna be about AI nonsense?
Here’s a fair question. Did Brian Kelly have AI write that?
I don’t know. But maybe! After all, everyone uses AI for way more than whatever they are willing to publicly admit.
Except, of course, for me.
We’ll see you next week. But before you go, it is never too late to upgrade to a paid subscription to FOIAball. In fact, it might even be the perfect time!
