This was a timely converging of events that were uniquely due to blow up in one of a few places to include Louisiana.
Geography: "It just means more" in Texas too. However, it wouldn't do the Texas governor any good to aggressively assert themselves into the Longhorns coaching search while trashing the athletic director because there are enough other instate voting Aggies, Raiders, Frogs, Bears, Cougs, and 'Stangs to make this a politically unpredictable endeavor. Even in less populated but college football minded states like Iowa or South Carolina, this would be a risk. LSU football is the only statewide show in town. (Please keep in mind this isn't the first time that an acting Governor took over the hiring process for a football coach.)
Buyout: As I've stated over the years in our "Coaching Buyouts and Contract Extensions Thread" thread, it was only a matter of time before a public official got vocal about the obscenely large and fully guaranteed buyouts. (I predicted it would be Mel Tucker's buyout that would draw a critical mass of attention to this, but, for good reason, his wasn't paid out.) And it just so happens the man responsible for the steepest buyout in college sports history was hired by LSU and wasted no time setting himself up for the same costly mistake by hiring Brian Kelly for a 1) fully guaranteed, 2) unrealistic dollar amount, for 3) an unrealistically long time. After Woodward tried to hire Tucker?!
And Scott Woodward absolutely deserves to lose his job for this. Forget the other sports that are doing well under Woodward's watch; BOTH football and men's basketball are underachieving.
There you have it:
https://twitter.com/On3sports/status/1984053089301631388
Truly, I'm not trying to take up for Scott Woodward, but I have always felt that the AD is chained to the "donors of substance" as $Dollar Bill used to say. No way Scott Woodward makes this decision in a vacuum. No way Scott Woodward signs a contract for this much money without serious boosters giving their approval. Now, when it all blows up, said boosters are nowhere to be seen, publicly, but they let him take the fall.
On paper, Kelly was a great hire. For us collegefootballologists, we all scratched our head because the hire made little sense. Kelly never seemed to fit in at LSU, culture wise.
Remember, when we hired Jimbo at A&M they gave him a plaque, undated, for winning the National Championship. No way any sane AD does this. They skipped ahead a lot of steps, they forgot all about the program building. And then when LSU blew kisses at Jimbo (with Woodward at the helm of LSU), those same boosters dropped their panties and gave him $77 million reasons not to care anymore, fully guaranteed, after one "decent" season where we got blown off the field by Alabama, again.
I will always believe that after we gave Jimbo so much fully guaranteed money is when he basically started mailing it in, because our team never played the same after that. That, and that "Number one of all time recruiting class" that basically turned out to be a bunch of thugs disguised as football players.
