And now, 20 Final Thoughts from college football’s Week 9, when three of the SEC’s top 10 teams in action won tough one-score games, while the fourth, Texas A&M, well …

1. LSU athletic director Scott Woodward has made a career out of hiring big-name coaches. He was the one who brought Chris Petersen to Washington and Jimbo Fisher to Texas A&M. Two of his most notable LSU hires, women’s basketball icon Kim Mulkey and baseball’s Jay Johnson, have already won national championships in Baton Rouge.

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But his biggest splash of all was hiring Notre Dame’s all-time winningest coach, Brian Kelly, before the 2022 season, giving him a 10-year, $95 million contract. Kelly got Tigers fans’ hopes up by reaching the conference title game in his first season and producing Heisman winner Jayden Daniels the next. But then things started to slip. And slip some more.

All of which led to a full-on implosion Saturday night in Death Valley.

2. The home team led No. 3 Texas A&M 18-14 at halftime. What happened from there was equal parts astounding and humiliating for LSU. The Aggies (8-0, 5-0 SEC) exploded for 35 consecutive points, A&M fans turned Tiger Stadium into Kyle Field East, and Kelly’s expression gradually transformed from angry to bewildered to dazed. No. 20 LSU (5-3, 2-3) has lost three of its past four, and will no longer be ranked come Sunday afternoon. We’ll see whether Kelly, who has a staggering $53 million buyout, will still be employed by then.

3. Woodward is the same AD who canned Ed Orgeron less than two years removed from a national title. Kelly was hired to win one himself, but his program has only grown farther from contention with each season. LSU went all in on its 2025 team — Kelly said in August the program had tripled its payroll this year to $18 million — and thus expected returns. But a season-opening win at top-five Clemson, now 3-4, proved deceiving, and it soon became clear LSU’s offensive line was a mess. And its defense, playing without star linebacker Whit Weeks, has imploded the past two weeks.

Compounding all of that, Kelly is famously … what’s the word … divisive? Saturday night, the cameras showed him yelling in quarterback Garrett Nussmeier’s face, cursing out offensive coordinator Joe Sloan over the headset and trying to throw that same headset in disgust, only to realize it was attached to him.