Transfer Portal. Recruiting. Off-the-field staff.
Brian Kelly and LSU keep making major moves.
Sources tell FootballScoop they’re on the cusp of another one this week in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Corey Phillips, an influential former high school coach in the metro Nashville, Tennessee, area, is departing the North Carolina State staff from Phillips’ Director of Scouting role to take on a high-end personnel position within the Tigers’ program, multiple sources in the Atlantic Coast Conference and Southeastern Conference tell FootballScoop.
Phillips’ impending addition to Kelly’s first staff is seen by industry insiders as another major recruiting move for Kelly, who’s coaching in the South for the first time in his three-decades-long career. In addition to his work at Nashville’s Father Ryan High School as that private-school program’s top assistant coach and director of recruiting, as well as his work at prestigious prep powerhouse Brentwood Academy – running freshman, junior varsity contests and varsity defenses along the way, Phillips had a five-year stint on the recruiting/personnel staff of Derek Mason prior to his work at N.C. State.
Phillips’ contacts are many, particularly in a metro Nashville area that already has been very good to the LSU program in recent years with players ranging from former star safety JaCoby Stevens to former standout-linebacker Jacob Phillips.
Already Kelly has made a significant number of key moves to his off-field-staff for his first year atop the Tigers’ program, bringing aboard Jordan Arcement, Sherman Wilson and Michael Ferrara, most recently of Texas A&M, and being able to retain the well-regarded Will Redmond, whose reputation and work had multiple other Power-5 programs to approach Redmond during the LSU transition from the fired Ed Orgeron to the Kelly era.