Minneapolis grad named Director of Football Operations at OU

Minneapolis native and 2015 MHS graduate John Kelly is in line to become the next Director of Football Operations at the University of Oklahoma. After becoming one of the more tenured members of OU’s staff in the wake of head coach Lincoln Riley’s departure for USC in late November, the 25-year old was offered the DFO position in December.

The significance of earning a position as Director of Football Operations for a major university is often the culmination of many professional careers, meaning Kelly’s age makes the hiring all the more impressive. 

Despite how direct the path may seem for someone reaching such a pedestal so young, he had his setbacks.

After graduation from Minneapolis - where he was a standout three-sport athlete and excellent student - Kelly planned on entering the Naval Academy, a lifelong goal. While his grades and reputation were pristine, he wasn’t able to control everything, and was denied acceptance due to a diagnosis of Keratoconus - a condition of the eye.

After learning that news, it was back to the drawing board for Kelly, but setbacks still laid ahead.

“Following high school, I decided to spend time training and working toward walking on (to play college football),” Kelly said. “So I spent probably six months working with Jake Sharp at Sharp Performance, and then I was offered an opportunity to walk-on with the football team at KU and I spent that spring of 2016 as a walk-on tight end, and then ultimately they kept one tight end and they got rid of everyone else.”
 
That bump in the road didn’t prevent him from going forward and he remained at KU.
 
“So I spent that summer figuring out what I wanted to do and walked back into the football office and I think I asked the Director of Operations at the time and I said ‘Hey, I’m really passionate about this, I want to stay with the team, is there anything I can do?’ and he said absolutely.” 
 
Opportunities on equipment staff and video staff were both available. Kelly elected the latter and remained with the Jayhawks for another two years, eventually working his way up from Student Assistant to the position of Football Video Assistant.
 
With his undergrad years quickly coming to an end, however, it was time for him to again reflect on his next move.
 
“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next,” Kelly said. “My dad was influential in pushing me toward a master’s degree, so I started out looking for graduate assistant jobs and at the time I was working in video, so I was looking to get into video departments across the country. I was actually in Milwaukee at the CSVA Conference (Clip Sports Video Association) and on the job board was a listing for the University of Oklahoma.”
 
With a stroke of luck, a connection was made.
 
Kelly’s boss at the time, KU Video Coordinator Jeff Love, happened to know OU’s Director of Football Video - Brian Martin - and not only that, Martin was a Salina native and graduate of Sacred Heart High School, just 20 minutes south of where Kelly grew up.
 
Martin and Kelly were introduced, recommendations were made, and not too long after that, OU had a new Football Video and Technology Graduate Assistant on their staff.
 
Since that hiring, Kelly received his master’s in Adult and Higher Education and Intercollegiate Athletics Administration from OU, while also climbing the ladder within the football staff.
 
Kelly’s most recent title with the Sooners was Assistant to the Director of Football Operations, which he began in March 2021, and it provided him an important foundation for what will be expected going forward.
 
“I worked hand-in-hand with the DFO, I worked with the assistant to the head coach, I was just kind of a jack of all trades,” Kelly said. “Plus, I would have specific responsibilities as far as working with assistant coaches on travel.”
 
Having only held that position for nine months, expectations didn’t have Kelly in that position by the 2022 season, and the news came as a bit of a shock.
 
“To be honest with you, it didn’t feel very realistic. My dad said, ‘What if coach offered the position to you?’ and I just kind of shook him off and said, ‘That’s not really possible dad,’” Kelly said. “Just with my age and I’ve never been a DFO before. With that being said, it’s not a position you just get. It happened very quickly, I think they saw something in me and decided to take a chance on someone who is younger and willing to work, I guess, and has knowledge of Oklahoma as a whole.” 
 
The new position, unsurprisingly, will see a whole new world of responsibilities and opportunities for Kelly.
 
“In this role, I’ll be specifically doing team travel – planes, buses, hotels, you name it – the logistics of an away game weekend,” Kelly said. “I’ll also be in charge of logistics day-to-day during fall camp, spring ball, summer, you know, in-season and offseason.”
 
Kelly faces a few major challenges in his position. The first and most pressing will be working with a new staff after the dramatic changes OU experienced this past fall.
 
“I think it’s probably cliché to say, but I think the most growth happens during a drastic change or during tough times and obviously Lincoln leaving was a drastic change for Oklahoma, and for me personally, I was not sure, and there were other staff members in the same boat, not sure of our future with Oklahoma. So that was a difficult time to go through, but it obviously worked out very well.”
 
Not only has it worked well in Kelly’s mind, but he senses renewed energy with the return of the Sooners former defensive coordinator, Brent Venables.
 
“For the university as a whole, I think it’s going to be a positive change,” Kelly said. “You see the atmosphere and energy around the program with coach Venables coming back. There’s a lot of excitement around him and around coach (Jeff) Lebby and (Ted) Roof, our coordinators. Again, it’s cliché, but we don’t rebuild, we reload.”
 
Another challenge for Kelly will be the eventual move OU is committed to making from the Big XII to the SEC in the next few years. At that time, it will be less about rebuilding or reloading, and more about recalibrating.
 
“I know that, athletic department-wise, the Athletic Director and head coaches of various sports, not just football, are in communication across the board on ‘this is what we need to do moving forward, this is our trajectory’ if you will,” Kelly said. “Then I think it comes down to having the right coaches, having the right players, having the right strength staff, having the right infrastructure and facilities all in the right place. I think that goes back to just analyzing what the infrastructure looks like in that conference. Not necessarily copying it, but looking at what you have or what you can leverage and use that to your advantage moving forward, as far as what facilities or donors you have.”
 
In the midst of the tectonic shifts in the conference landscape Norman sits on, Kelly pointed out the familiarity he’s grown used to in his time employed in the Big XII and the challenges with leaving that behind.
 
“I was at Kansas for two seasons and then came to Oklahoma, just finished my fourth season, and being in the Big XII, we haven’t lost or added any teams since that took place [since Big XII realignment in the early 2010s],” Kelly said. “So I’ve been to every place three or four times, depending on where it is. Typically we stay at the same hotel – same as when I was at Kansas – visiting teams here in Norman stay in one place, when you go to Kansas State you stay at one place, when you go to Kansas you stay one place, so that’ll be different for me, going to all these new stadiums because you kind of get a feel for what to expect when you take a trip out to Morgantown or go down to Lubbock.”
 
With a loss of what he’s accustomed to, new experiences and challenges are something Kelly welcomes.
 
“That’s exciting, that there are going to be some new opportunities, new stadiums, new fan-bases, new cities to visit. But logistically, it’ll be different, because with the BIG XII, teams were centrally located, there’s no place – besides West Virginia - that’s a terribly long trip. So thinking about our truck driver who’s driving all the equipment, thinking about the advanced staff, thinking about hotels, where we’re going to stay, and just learning the ends and outs of the SEC when that time comes. But first just enjoy the time we still have in the Big XII.”
 
Kelly will also miss the opportunities to travel to Manhattan and Lawrence, where he has a significant number of friends and family he gets to see on game day weekends.
 
“Some of my favorite trips, obviously I’m an alum of Kansas, so it’s good to go back and see friends there and I have a lot of friends that graduated from Kansas State, so it’s always great to go back to Manhattan and see them and just be around family and friends,” Kelly said. “So I’ll cherish those few final games against those schools and just enjoy the atmosphere of various places.”
 
Regardless, Kelly plans to continue to do what got him in this lofty position at such a young age.
 
“When the time came,” Kelly said, “I was one of the few people left here that kind of knew the organization, knew the athletic department, knew people to talk to for various issues, and just spent time with the right people and worked hard and I’d say the same for past instances as well. Regardless of the opportunity, my position was just trying to be around and available and willing to help in any way, just putting my best foot forward.”