Louisiana Governor Rips Scott Woodward, Says LSU AD Won't Pick Brian Kelly Replacement

Less than a week after his ouster at LSU, the search to replace Brian Kelly took quite a turn Wednesday.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said LSU athletic director Scott Woodward will not have the final say over the Tigers' next coach. He told reporters Wednesday the school is "not going down a failed path" and referenced the sizable buyouts for Kelly and Jimbo Fisher, whom Woodward originally hired at Texas A&M:

LSU Board of Supervisor's chair Scott Ballard said he "didn't know that" when questioned about the announcement:

An athletic director's job goes beyond hiring the football coach.

Woodward poached Kim Mulkey from Baylor, and Mulkey delivered a national title in her second season. He was also in Baton Rouge when Jay Clark was promoted to co-head coach for the women's gymnastics team and then assumed the full-time role in 2020. The program won its first national title in 2024. The baseball team has a pair of championships under another coach, Jay Johnson, who was hired by Woodward.

The general criticism toward Woodward also obscures the fact he wasn't in College Station when A&M gave Fisher his last extension. Ross Bjork was the AD who signed Fisher through 2031 with an annual salary starting at $9 million.

Still, the fully guaranteed 10-year, $75 million pact Woodward oversaw in 2018 was both a mistake in retrospect and a major event for the coaching market as a whole.

Football is also king at LSU. How the Tigers are performing in other sports isn't totally irrelevant, but a bad year for the football team inevitably overshadows everything else.

Questions over Woodward's future at LSU were already emerging in the wake of Kelly's firing. Now, there may be no coming back after the state governor undermined him in such a public manner.