Copyright Essentially Sports
Louisiana politics and LSU football. That’s two things that can’t stay out of each other’s way. This week, the collision was spectacular. After Brian Kelly’s firing, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry took the mic and made it clear. AD Scott Woodward would not be picking the new HC. It’s shocking that Baton Rouge’s most powerful man just benched the AD. But as it turns out, the clash didn’t pop up overnight. On a Yahoo! Sports episode on October 30, Ross Dellenger peeled back the curtain on Jeff Landry’s long-simmering rift with LSU’s brass. A feud brewed from ego, politics, and a few headline-grabbing stunts. “Some things that the governor did almost immediately when he got elected a year and a half ago, two years ago, was involve himself in a couple of LSU matters that produced some pretty big controversy,” he said. That involvement included Landry publicly criticizing Kim Mulkey’s women’s basketball team on Fox News for not being present during the national anthem, a practice, Dellenger pointed out, “a lot of teams aren’t present” for anyway. The move “frustrated a lot of people on campus,” he added, lighting the fuse for what was to come. Then came the tiger. Literally. “He went out and he got a tiger, a live tiger from Florida and brought him in to continue the tradition of a caged tiger being wheeled around LSU’s football field,” Ross Dellenger said, referring to Jeff Landry’s attempt to revive LSU’s old mascot tradition. The problem is that practice was scrapped a decade ago after campus vets deemed it animal mistreatment. Still, the governor charged ahead, drumming up more controversy than school spirit. And just when you thought it couldn’t get wilder, another kicker dropped. ADVERTISEMENT Article continues below this ad “The governor urged LSU to rehire Will Wade,” Dellenger added. The former basketball coach was booted for multiple NCAA violations. LSU passed, but Jeff Landry didn’t forget. So when Scott Woodward axed Brian Kelly midseason, he pounced. Within days, the man who brought LSU a national title and hired Kim Mulkey was gone, undone by a political heavyweight who doesn’t play by football’s unwritten rules.
