Louisiana governor Jeff Landry has been getting involved with LSU a lot lately, and this has been met with much criticism. Landry’s meddling at LSU has already caused dysfunction in the school, especially in its athletics department, and it may even cause implications in its search for a football coach after Brian Kelly was fired, as analyst Josh Pate pointed out.
Landry, a Republican and ally of President Donald Trump, slammed then-Athletic Director Scott Woodward and blamed him for LSU’s football woes, leading the school to eventually fire him. He also proposed to the school’s board of directors that they should erect a statue of far-right provocateur, Charlie Kirk. Josh Pate believes these moves has caused chaos in the athletics department and may even turn off potential coaches like Lane Kiffin.
“They don’t care that you don’t even know who your boss is. They don’t care that your NIL coffers aren’t what they should be because there’s infighting with the boosters. Some of them vote Republican, some of them vote Democrat, and a Republican governor puts someone in that they don’t align with politically, so they’re just going to sit on their wallet. They don’t care that that’s happening behind the scenes. They’re just hating on you ‘cuz you’re going 8-4 at LSU,” he said. (4:05)
Pate added that should Kiffin be offered the job, it should be noted that he already has whatever he wants over at Ole Miss and that transferring to LSU, with the governor meddling in school affairs and all the drama being created from that, could be a turn off. That being said, LSU still has time to convince him, but with all the drama going on, that could be hard.
LSU Says Governor Jeff Landry Was Not Involved In Athletic Director’s Firing After Much Criticism
Landry and LSU were slammed by various publications all over the country, with the Dallas Morning News calling it “political theater” while The Athletic said Landry’s meddling “scared off all of the top candidates” for the football coaching job. The publication also called on university administrators to “take responsibility in an era of the run-amok Supercoach that needs to end now.”
After this, the university itself denied any involvement from Landry in its decision to fire Scott Woodward as AD. LSU Board of Supervisors member member Scott Ballard said in a statement that the school and Woodward had a “mutual agreement” about their parting and Landry was not involved whatsoever.
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