I can't say for sure that Kelly thought he wasn't going to have to work as hard. He certainly figured he would have a better opportunity to win a National Championship and more or less said as much. At the time, everything lined up to him being correct. It was well documented that Saban, Miles and Orgeron all won National Championships at LSU.
I honestly don't believe, having experienced Willingham at ND, that any of these programs sell themselves, recruit themselves or win themselves. You have to have a group of a few hundred people working together toward the same goal.
I agree that Kelly thinking “the road will be easier at LSU” =/= “I won’t have to work as hard”
The problem, I think, is that he likely thought “if I do the same things I did at ND, the caliber of kids attracted to LSU and the football-factory mindset will be the difference.”
So while likely being too professional to entertain the idea of actually “taking it easy,” he likely ignored some of the things that held him back at ND, figuring LSU was at least the great equalizer, or else the great boost he needed…. And that was why he ultimately couldn’t get over the hump at ND. He was blind to his shortcomings at times, and instead of going above and beyond when his program was so close to the top, he tried to get everyone else around him to do it.
It sounds like he felt the same at LSU… “LSU is LSU, these kids will want to come here and my program will work as long as everyone else works hard.”
But as we all learned in the hit Disney classic “Remember the Titans”: attitude reflects leadership. If BK isn’t working harder than everyone else in the building, you’ve already lowered the ceiling.