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The college football season is less than a month away, and one of the Week 1 headliners will include LSU’s opening matchup against Clemson.
The Tigers recently attempted to build the anticipation with a preseason hype video showing images from fall camp. After landing immediate criticism, the social media team took that post down.
That backlash referenced the opening scene of the clip as well as an unfortunate incident from head coach Brian Kelly’s past.
LSU football tweets then deletes hype video.
The clip starts off with an image of a tower on the outdoor practice field before showing players getting ready for a fall camp session.
Kelly is heard in a voiceover in the video speaking on the importance of “today” and using the present to build towards the future.
The message, unfortunately, didn’t hit like the Tigers had hoped. The optics of that opening image were extremely poor.
Brian Kelly’s incident at Notre Dame explained.
In October of 2010, the Fighting Irish held a practice session outside despite high winds that eclipsed 50 MPH. A student videographer, Declan Sullivan, was atop a lift filming the action. That lift blew over, resulting in Sullivan’s death.
Kelly accepted some fault in the tragic accident, saying it was his decision to hold the practice outdoors as opposed to the indoor facility.
“You have to be able to look at the weather conditions and find out whether you believe it’s going to be a productive day, first,” Kelly said after the fact. “We believed it was going to be productive, it was productive, obviously up until the tragedy.”
Declan Sullivan was honored at a later Notre Dame football game. Unfortunately, he, too, expressed some concerns about the weather prior to practice.
LSU’s oversight resulted in criticism.
Many immediately linked Brian Kelly and the practice tower. Again, the optics weren’t great.
Social media users commented on the video after seeing it go live.
“THERE’S NO WAY LSU DID THIS,” one fan said. “That zoom into the film tower… is WILD.”
“Delete the tweet all you wanna LSU football we saw it,” commented another.
There was no ill-intent in the post. It was meant to be a talking point to further build excitement for the LSU football season. It’s now being discussed for negative reasons.