Brian Kelly is moving from the sideline to the broadcast booth. CBS Sports announced Monday that Kelly will join the network as a college football analyst for select games and for studio work on CBS Sports Network’s Tuesday show, Inside College Football.
His first scheduled assignment is Week 0, when he will call Jacksonville State against North Dakota State on Saturday, Aug. 29, from CBS Sports Network in Fargo, N.D. Kelly is also slated for Texas Tech at Oregon State in Week 2 and BYU at Colorado State the following week, giving him an early run of games tied to the new-look Pac-12 Conference and a clear test of how he handles both game-day pacing and studio commentary.
The hire puts Kelly back on a national football platform only months after LSU fired him last October following a 34-14 record over three-plus years in Baton Rouge. He already had a preview of the role this spring, when he worked as a studio analyst for CBS Sports Network’s NFL Draft coverage. That appearance gave the network a look at how he would sound away from coaching, and it appears to have fed into a broader plan for him this fall and into the 2026 season.
CBS Sports did not frame Kelly as a one-off guest. He will serve as both a game analyst and a studio voice, which means the network is treating him as a regular part of its college football coverage rather than a stopgap name for a single broadcast window. The move also comes alongside the addition of Doug Pederson, who will work 10 games on CBS Sports Network this fall after leading the Philadelphia Eagles to a Super Bowl victory following the 2017 season.
That is the sharp edge of the announcement: CBS Sports is betting that two former head coaches can translate recent locker-room credibility into television value, even when one of them was dismissed only last fall. For Kelly, the next marker is straightforward. If he sounds at home in Week 0 and in the weeks that follow, this is not a cameo. It is the start of a second act.
