Give Brian Kelly credit.

True, if you see him coming these days it’s almost like seeing that distant cousin, the newly minted life insurance salesman, coming around the corner.

Avoid eye contact. Sneak into a side store.

He’s hawking something to get into your wallet, you can be sure. In Kelly’s case, it’s not that term life policy you’ve been putting it off.

Just cash. So if you’re a little light this month, you might want to avoid Kelly’s phone calls, check the peep hole before answering the front door.

Kelly probably spends almost as much time these days recruiting Dollar Bills as he does the Jimmys & Joes.

Money talks in this new age of blatantly buying football players legally, up front and pretty much above board.

Your basic cash on the barrelhead is what it is.

These days you can have all the lockerroom amenities you wat. Show the recruits all the luxury resort-style saunas, the 5-star training tables, your indoor-outdoor putting greens and water slides.

Current-day recruits probably won’t bat an eye. They might even yawn. Those knick-knacks are sooooo 2020 when it comes to recruiting.

Better now to just bring the cold cash and get it over with. Show me the money.

So that’s probably what Kelly wants to talk to you about — got to keep feeding more and more funding for that NIL, the collective that provides the big gold to be mined by your college football heroes these days.

You’ll probably hear that filling that NIL kitty is absolutely vital if LSU is going compete for championships.

And he’s probably right.

But, while beating the bushes these last few months, at least,  Kelly is putting his money where his mouth has been.

He took to email Friday to announce the “Kelly Family Million Dollar Match Challenge,” which may sound like a new game show, but is actually an NIL fundraiser benefitting LSU.

In effect, Kelly will reach into his own wallet and match — up to one million cash smackeroos — the money that fans and alums scrape togher to donate to the school’s NIL collective.

“I figured that after my last press conference — where I pretty much challenged the entire fan base that if they wanted to continue to have a championship program they needed to understand there’s a financial responsibility as well — that I needed to put my money where my mouth was and be part of that,” Kelly said Friday.

It turns out that Kelly can’t directly deposit money into the school’s NIL fund. There is an actual rule — wait, the NCAA still has rules? who knew? — against coaches donating to NIL collectives to benefit their own players.

Not to worry, the TAF will find something football-related to do with it.

So Kelly’s million dollar challenge will actually go to the Tiger Athletic Foundation.

The school did not announce how Kelly’s matching donation will be used by the TAF, but it’s a safe bet it won’t be on a chemistry lab.

Meanwhile, Kelly is drumming up dollars for both recruits and for shopping sprees in the transfer portal.

He’s had the same speech for a while now, and doubled-down on National Signing Day.

That’s when he recalled that the Tigers lost out on two transfer defensive linemen last year when the bidding got too high.

“It wasn’t because we didn’t offer money, it wasn’t because we didn’t recruit them,” Kelly explained. “It was because the value … wasn’t market value. It was exponentially more because it meant they needed that piece, and they were going to do whatever was necess                                                                                                                 ary to get that piece.

Kelly was slow to come around on the portal, preferring old-fashioned, grass-roots high school recruiting. Now, however,  he understands how the real world is changing.

“I think you could make the case… let’s just go raise money the entire  recruiting season, then the last few weeks, let’s just go buy a team of freshmen,” Kelly said then. “That’s not what we’re going to do, right? But what it means is that recruiting no longer is just about recruiting. It’s no longer just about relationships. You need a collective, you need the NIL to supplement. That’s just the reality of what world we live in.”

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics for the American Press. Contact him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com