Politics giveth and politics taketh.
That might as well be the story of LSU athletic director Scott Woodward’s time as the top boss of Tigers athletics.
LSU fired Woodward on Thursday, one day after Louisiana governor Jeff Landry went nuclear on the LSU AD saying unequivocally he would not be hiring the next LSU football coach.
“Hell, I’ll let Donald Trump select it before I let him do it.” Landry said in a soundbite that both shocked and amused many within college athletics.
The decision comes just days after Woodward unilaterally made the call Sunday to fire football coach Brian Kelly, according to sources, in a $54 million decision that infuriated Landry and Board of Supervisors members who weren’t consulted beforehand. In just a five-day span, LSU has committed (for now) nearly $60 million to rid itself of its AD and football coach. LSU had been working to negotiate Kelly’s buyout down.
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This is a stunning fall from grace for Woodward, an experienced political operative known for his prowess in maneuvering in the shadows to get what he wanted. A political lobbyist before jumping into college athletics under then-LSU president Mark Emmert, Woodward counted friends on both sides of political ideologies and had a way of working behind-the-scenes to get his way.
It was politics, after all, that got him the job in the first place.
In a famous backroom political maneuver, Woodward knew he would be the next LSU AD before his future boss and university president F. King Alexander. In fact, he got the LSU AD job despite it not being open.
In an April 2019 incident he refers to as the “Monday Night Massacre,” Alexander says he was told to go to Jubans Restaurant & Bar, an upscale creole-themed spot that serves shrimp aubergine and redfish adrian. As Alexander was led into the backroom, he was met with the LSU Board of Supervisors.
The supervisors, who had all been appointed by then-Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards, told Alexander he had to fire AD Joe Alleva the next morning because they had already hired Woodward, then at Texas A&M, as the school’s next AD. Alexander said it just so happened that one of the board members was best friends with Woodward, an LSU alumnus, since they went to Catholic High School in Baton Rouge together.
Alleva was not particularly popular at the time with the supervisors or LSU fans for his decision to suspend then-basketball coach Will Wade, but Alexander had preferred to just let the AD ride it out until his contract expired the following year. That wasn’t good enough for the board members — they wanted Alleva out immediately in favor of Woodward.
“They wrote down the salary they had already given him,” Alexander told CBS Sports on Thursday. “They wrote it down on a napkin and then slipped me the napkin on what they were going to pay the new AD who I hadn’t even interviewed.”
From that point, it was clear to Alexander, who served as LSU president from 2013-2019, that he would have no oversight over Woodward despite what the university reporting structure demanded.
“He knew all he had to do was call board members,” Alexander said. “He did whatever he wanted to.”
That included, according to sources, frequently being out of the office and largely delegating day-to-day responsibilities to subordinates. He had plenty of detractors in SEC circles, but internally at LSU he smartly stayed close to the power players on the Board of Supervisors and largely operated in the shadows without getting his hands dirty. Woodward’s decision to fire Kelly following an emotionally-charged meeting that went poorly, according to sources, was a rare political misstep for him that Landry quickly pounced on.
As stunning as Landry’s public comments and actions have been this week, they are just the latest in a long list of examples of Louisiana governors getting involved in LSU athletics.
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To understand the long-standing relationship between LSU athletics and politics, we need to go back to the days of “The Kingfish.”
Despite never attending the school, Huey Long loved LSU. He believed that a bigger and better LSU not only benefited his political ambitions but would be good for the state of Louisiana.
First as governor and later as a United States senator before his 1935 assassination, Long was so involved in LSU athletics that if you didn’t know any better you might have thought he was the football coach. He tried recruiting football players to LSU. He wrote the fight song “Touchdown for LSU” that is still used today. He gave pregame and halftime speeches.
Before a game against Arkansas in 1928, Long told the LSU players, “Hell, you ought to beat ’em. We got better roads in Louisiana, free schoolbooks, and better everything,” as documented in Robert Mann’s book “Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU.”
Long was involved in the dismissal of at least two LSU football coaches, one of which because the coach, Captain Lawrence Jones, wouldn’t let him give a halftime speech during a game.
“It hasn’t changed a whole lot,” Alexander said with a laugh about LSU’s current situation.
From Long, there have been multiple Louisiana governors who have gotten involved in LSU athletics. With the state capital and flagship university just a few miles away from each other in Baton Rouge, it’s ripe for attempted influence over a major financial engine within the state.
Bobby Jindal, the state’s governor from 2008-16, was a big fan of former LSU coach Les Miles and once directed LSU leaders to keep the football coach “no matter what it takes” amid interest from Michigan. This frustrated LSU’s president at the time, Michael Martin, who would later tell The Advocate, “I found it interesting that the governor’s office had time to track Les’ future when at least I thought there were more important things happening in the state of Louisiana.”
But Jindal was just following the Long playbook that a good LSU football team could be good for him, too.
“The governor can make or break a football coach,” Jim Engster, a long-time Louisiana media figure, told Sports Illustrated in 2019. “And a football coach, if he’s winning, adds to the cache of the governor.”
Jindal reportedly intervened on Miles’ behalf during the 2015 season as reports swirled LSU readied to fire the national championship-winning coach and pursue then-Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher. LSU AD Joe Alleva was prepared to fire Miles, but Jindal encouraged giving him another season. LSU’s Board of Supervisors weren’t entirely on board with the idea of spending $17 million to dump Miles and his assistants, either. A group of LSU officials, including Alexander, famously met during halftime of LSU’s regular-season finale against Texas A&M where it was decided Miles would return for another season.
(Alexander said Jindal really didn’t intervene with Miles and that meeting, which occurred in the president’s suite and included multiple members of the Board of Supervisors, was about whether Miles would make changes to an offense that had gone stale).
Miles only made it four games into the following season before he was fired following an 18-13 loss to Auburn. A predictable offense that almost got him canned 10 months earlier finally caught up to him. Alexander and Alleva hired native son Ed Orgeron to replace him. And, of course, Jindal’s replacement, John Bel Edwards, would develop a close relationship with Miles’ replacement. Orgeron even endorsed Edwards in his 2019 gubernatorial campaign.
How are Louisiana governors able to have so much influence? They appoint the 14-person Board of Supervisors. With those appointments come perks like football tickets and premium parking, among other benefits. Increasingly it has been used as a reward to political supporters and like-minded donors. Members of the Board of Supervisors are on six-year terms, staggered over the years, which can allow a two-term governor like Edwards to stack the entire board. Of course this isn’t done exclusively to gain control over LSU football — there are plenty of reasons it could be beneficial to have friendly allies on the board.
There was no question, though, that being involved with LSU football was a big appeal for board members.
“The most popular board member — the one who lobbied the hardest — became chair of the athletic committee of the board,” Alexander said. “The most unfortunate board member, the one who nobody liked, became chair of the academic affairs committee of the board.”
Only one year into his term, Landry has already appointed six members to the board and will get to pick another four next year. Like Long before him, Landry didn’t attend LSU. He got his undergraduate degree at Louisiana and a law degree at Loyola before beginning a political career that included becoming the state’s attorney general. With a strong Louisiana accent straight out of central casting, Landry has quickly developed a reputation as a firebrand who has been unafraid to go after tenured professors, coaches and, most recently, athletic directors who evoke his ire.
Landry may not know all the facts about the current college football environment — he mistakenly referred to the College Football Playoff as the Bowl Championship Series in a radio interview Thursday — but that hasn’t diminished his self-confidence he’s the man to fix LSU football. He can’t directly hire a football coach — he has said this isn’t his intent, regardless — but without a permanent university president, it has created a power vacuum he has gladly stepped into.
At minimum, Landry can exert his influence over his board appointees to hire his preferred presidential candidate, which many believe to be McNeese State president Wade Rousse. Rousse is one of three finalists for the job with LSU’s Board of Supervisors expected to pick the next university president next week.
With the right next LSU president, Landry can then have significant influence over the next athletic director and football coach hires. And if that person resists his desires, Landry can push his Board of Supervisors appointees to oust another major figure. Landry’s increased involvement has spooked multiple industry sources CBS Sports has talked to about the upcoming football coaching search with one saying, simply, “LSU doesn’t have a plan.”
His involvement in the firing of Kelly, which included hosting key officials to discuss it at the governor’s mansion last Sunday, and of Woodward is highly unusual but not completely without precedent. After all, 42 states have governor involvement in some fashion on the university board members/trustees appointment process. As Brookings Institute noted earlier this year, “In some ways, the focus on boards is a smart tactical move by governors and legislatures hoping to gain greater influence over institutions.”
“It seems that, at least in several cases, over the past couple of years, it appears that government officials and university boards have sidestepped their normal governance procedures,” said Amy Privette Perko, the chief executive officer of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. “It’s hard to imagine circumstances that warrant disregard for following best practices in university governance. That said, given the high stakes with college sports and some of the heightened efforts between college sports leaders and state governments, it’s not surprising to see a desire among lawmakers to be more involved.”
That last part is key in understanding what the future could bring.
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Landry inserting himself into the LSU football coaching search has elicited strong reactions across college athletics. Few of them have been positive about what it means for LSU.
“I was neither shocked nor surprised,” said Dr. B. David Ridpath, professor of sports business at Ohio University. “It was almost comical.”
But it is, some say, what you get when you court political influence over college athletics. From lobbying state representatives for advantageous Name, Image and Likeness laws to benefit the in-state universities to repeated trips to Washington, D.C. in hopes of federal legislation, college sports leaders have been begging politicians to get involved.
The problem is once you invite them in, they may decide to do more than you intended.
You can ask for help on an NIL bill, for instance, but in exchange the legislator may want more influence on campus. Or you can look for creative ways to help increase revenue like a Louisiana bill that directs sports gambling tax revenue to the Division I schools in the state, but it may attract the governor to be more involved now that state tax dollars were in play. That has seemed to be the angle for Landry so far. He said Thursday on the Pat McAfee Show that state taxpayers would be on the hook for Kelly’s massive buyout if private donors didn’t step in.
“That contract binds the state of Louisiana,” Landry said. “If someone doesn’t step up and pay that bill, the state of Louisiana has to foot that bill.”
Political involvement in college sports seems to be especially prominent down South, says Ridpath, who previously worked at Mississippi State.
“I cannot imagine (Ohio governor) Mike DeWine saying that,” Ridpath said of Landry’s Woodward comments. “I can’t imagine (Governor) Wes Moore in Maryland doing that. But for some reason, I can imagine Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia doing that.”
Bowen Loftin, the former president of Texas A&M, experienced the influence of then-Texas governor Rick Perry when the school was first considering joining the SEC. Perry, a Texas A&M graduate, told both Texas and Texas A&M to stand down in 2010 when they were considering leaving the Big 12. In Texas, Loftin said, the governor stacked the board with people who gave political money and would carry out his vision. He talked to them frequently making sure he knew where everyone stood before he pushed for something.
In many ways, they had more loyalty to the governor than the school they represented.
“It’s very difficult to manage that because they, in principle, have the power to hire and fire presidents and control budgets,” Loftin previously told us. “They oftentimes aren’t donors, they are people who just have a passion or gotten the position because the governor put them there. And that might have happened because of money.”
What’s happening at LSU could embolden ambitious governors elsewhere and scare college administrators everywhere.
In Baton Rouge, LSU is now without a permanent football coach, athletic director and university president. In their place is a 54-year old Republican governor who has now turned his attention to going after the significant influence of prominent agents such as Jimmy Sexton and Trace Armstrong, promising that LSU won’t be giving out another 10-year, $95 million contract the way it did for Kelly.
Landry is on a hot streak, no doubt, but even he may be surprised at just how limited a governor’s power is against the might of college football’s top agents.
