By the time LSU officials sat down Friday morning to address the media, they were solemn and bleary-eyed from the theatrics of the previous week.
It began Sunday night with the abrupt firing of football coach Brian Kelly; then the public meddling of Louisiana’s governor, emboldened without a university president. It ended with LSU and athletic director Scott Woodward parting ways Thursday night. The university had no permanent football coach, athletic director, or university president.
But Friday morning, flanked by LSU board chairman Scott Ballard and board athletics committee chairman John Carmouche, interim AD Verge Ausberry tried to take the power back for LSU athletics.
“LSU,” Ausberry, a Louisiana native, former LSU football player, and longtime athletics official, proclaimed, “is not broken.”
Ausberry said the athletic department has assembled a search committee—which includes himself as well as Carmouche, Ballard, and big-name LSU donors—to find “the best football coach there is.” He added, “Whatever it takes to get that person here, we will do.”
Damage Control
The trio also distanced themselves from the comments Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry made Wednesday and Thursday during a media blitz. They denied Landry’s claim that taxpayer dollars might find their way into Kelly’s pocket. They also implied that the next coach could still receive a major buyout, appearing to dismiss Landry’s request to avoid another Kelly-esque buyout in the next contract.
Going into last Saturday’s game against Texas A&M in Baton Rouge, there were already disgruntled rumblings about Kelly. But after the Aggies trounced the Tigers 49–25, bringing LSU’s record to 5–3 (2–3 in SEC play), Kelly’s tenure came to an end hours later. He is owed a $53 million buyout for his troubles per his contract, though the university said it was negotiating an exit agreement.
During his Friday presser, Ausberry said he walked onto the field between the third and fourth quarters of the A&M game. “I saw empty seats. Empty suites. … It’s not a good thing.”
After the firing, rumors flew that Landry—a Republican Louisiana native with a thick Cajun accent—had been involved in the decision, given that a meeting was held in the governor’s mansion Sunday afternoon.
The Governor Sounds Off
On Wednesday, during a press conference not about football, Landry addressed those rumors.
He explained the purpose was to discuss the terms of Kelly’s buyout and how it would be funded, not to weigh in on whether to fire him.
During a subsequent media tour that included a cameo on The Pat McAfee Show as well as local Louisiana sports radio, Landry repeated a concern that Louisiana taxpayers might be on the hook for Kelly’s buyout, given that LSU is a public university that receives taxpayer funds, and that LSU was supposed to pay Kelly’s buyout if other donors didn’t offer their own private funds.
LSU athletics is self-funded, however, and has even given funds to the university, rather than the other way around. As is the case at many top programs, buyouts are funded through athletic department revenues and donations, Ballard said. Added Carmouche on Friday: “Let me make it clear: The state has never and the taxpayers have never paid for a coach, and never will.”
Woodward’s Fate Sealed
But Landry didn’t stop there. He said he would not be involved in picking the next coach—but neither would Woodward. “Hell, I’d let Donald Trump select him before I’d let him do it,” he proclaimed, saying erroneously that Woodward had a track record of signing off on gargantuan buyouts. Landry went on to say the LSU Board of Supervisors would assemble a committee to find the next coach (that was news to Ballard).
Landry said Thursday he didn’t have the power to unilaterally fire Woodward, but he could certainly call the LSU board members who can fire him—and who Landry appoints—to express his views.
Regardless of Landry’s direct influence, his comments had major consequences. On Thursday night, LSU announced that Woodward and LSU athletics “agreed to part ways.” The implication: The board may have felt obligated to fire him, given their allegiances to Landry, while Woodward may not have felt he could do his job after being publicly trounced by the governor. Ironically, Landry’s meddling now meant that LSU was on the hook for a buyout owed to Woodward himself of about $6.4 million. (LSU is negotiating those terms as well, Carmouche said.)
The Fallout
Though expected, the announcement caused chaos. Fans lamented that LSU now lacked a football coach, athletic director, and university president. LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey did not attend a postgame press conference because she was “heartbroken” over the news.
On Friday, Ballard and Carmouche danced around the reasoning for Woodward’s firing, and they could not name one performance-based reason. Ballard denied that Landry made the decision, despite his public comments. “It was a mutual agreement after conversations and with all the things that come into that,” Ballard said.
They also addressed Landry’s potential involvement in finding Kelly’s successor. On Thursday, Landry had said he would be involved in the terms of the contract so long as LSU, as a university, was the payor. “I think that everyone is in agreement here, in the state of Louisiana, that the next coach that we hire is going to have a patently different contract,” he told McAfee, adding that he believed compensation should be more performance-based than guaranteed.
LSU officials disputed these comments Friday as well, however. When asked whether that was a concern, Ausberry said: “Our job, I was told, was to get the best football coach there is—and don’t worry about that at all.”
By the time the 20-minute press conference wrapped, LSU officials had done what they could to wrap up the circus: They had corrected inaccuracies spouted by their governor, outlined their plan to find a new coach, and promised a better football future. “This program cannot have apathy,” Ausberry said. “We have to win. We have to be successful.”
