Wait, what the hell is happening in Louisiana?

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Thanks to everybody who hung out with us yesterday at Office Hours! We’ll share video and clips from the events on our social media channels over the coming days, and we’ll look to do one of these at least one more time before the end of the year. I noticed many of you said that the 6:30-8:00 PM ET time slot was tricky for you, so we’ll shoot for a different window next time…maybe during regular business hours?

Also, thanks to everybody who played and tested WHO’S THAT FOOTBALL TEAM? last week. If you follow me on social media, you might have seen me tease some updates over the last few days…but since last week, we’ve added about 400 new clues, some improved graphics, and plenty of new features.

If you want to give it a shot, just click here! I’d love your feedback as we continue to tweak the AI, find new data sets, and figure out a way to maybe make this game a regular part of Extra Points and our website.

More Taste and Quality – 100% Guaranteed

Hand-selected for quality and hand-carved by master butchers with over 900 years of combined experience, Omaha Steaks delivers heartland quality and unmatched value straight to Extra Points readers’ doors for free on any shipment of $99 or more! From ocean-fresh, flash-frozen seafood to slowly air-chilled chicken and grass-fed, grain-finished beef (and everything in between), Omaha Steaks – America’s Original Butcher – guarantees absolute consistency in every single bite, every single time.

In fact, they’re so confident you’ll love it, they back every single product with their 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. If you aren't satisfied with your purchase from Omaha Steaks, for any reason, they will replace your order or refund your money, whichever you prefer. They’ve upheld this family promise for five generations and counting.

Shop Guaranteed Perfection Now and Get Free Shipping!

I’m writing the newsletter much later in the day than I normally do, and not just because of Office Hours. I felt like I needed to delete this newsletter a few times and retype it as more news trickled in, thanks to one of the more bizarre stories in recent memory.

First, let me step in and state that it is not unheard of for politicians to be involved, sometimes heavily involved, with college athletic governance. Governors and senators have attempted to influence (sometimes successfully!) conference realignment decisions, facility plans, and yes, occasionally, even coach hirings and firings. This occasionally happens out in the open, but usually, political pressure is more discrete.,

Louisiana, of course, is a different animal altogether. Many college football fans are at least broadly familiar with the story of The Kingfish, Gov. Huey Long. Long dove headfirst into completely transforming LSU, efforts that did not stop with establishing a medical school or building new buildings…but also in growing the size of the marching band, writing fight songs, directing team travel, and yeah, even firing coaches.

Louisiana’s current governor, Jeff Landry, appears to be trying to channel his inner Huey P. Long.

To recap a wild 72 hours: LSU fires head football coach Brian Kelly. Gov. Landry, stepping in because LSU doesn’t have a school president at the moment, then gives a press conference, where he adamantly claims that LSU athletic director Scott Woodward would not be hiring LSU’s next head coach, but that the LSU Board of Supervisors would make the decision…a group that just so happens to be heavily picked by Gov. Landry. This development was apparently news to the Board of Supervisors.

He then decided to drive home the idea that he, the sitting governor, would not be making the hiring decision, by going on the Pat McAfee show (McAfee told me on Twitter that his people invited the Gov, FWIW), and then giving several more interviews.

The Governor is also adamant that he does not want the university to pay their next football coach a similar kind of contract that Brian Kelly, or many other big-name coaches, are getting. He railed against high buyouts and long-term contracts, as well as the sometimes conflicted relationships between ADs and coaches who may share agents (even if the stuff he said about Scott Woodward, Jimbo Fisher and Brian Kelly all sharing agents was completely untrue).

And then, on Thursday evening, multiple outlets reported that LSU would be parting ways with Scott Woodward, which, after that press conference, duh. Ironically, Woodward will be owed a hefty buyout himself. Via the Extra Points Library:

This also isn’t the first time that Landry, who, by the way, did not go to LSU, inserted himself into LSU athletics.

You might recall, last year, how the Governor decided LSU needed to have a live tiger at football games, even though specialists at LSU said that wasn’t really a good idea. He also got into a public spat with women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey over skipping the national anthem, even though such a practice is quite common in college basketball.

Special Weird Louisiana Stuff Correspondent Ross Dellinger had the best and most comprehensive story on what’s going on between LSU athletics and the state capital. But let me share just a brief passage:

It certainly seems to me that Landry has a personal beef with Woodward, be that over Will Wade, Woodward’s ties to Democratic (or at least insufficiently Conservative) political figures in Louisiana, or a simple desire to wage a perpetual culture war.

Let me be clear about something. This behavior is not typical in college athletics. It is not the common purview of governors. And it could absolutely impact the future of LSU sports.

Do I think a top football coach is going to decide not to interview at LSU because the state’s governor is a brash, hyper-engaged conservative? Nah. To the extent that elite college football coaches have any political opinions whatsoever, (many are completely unaware of anything that doesn’t pertain to Xs and Os or fundraising), most white CFB coaches have personal politics far closer to Landry than not. The AFCA meetings are not a Bennington College reading club, I’ll tell you what.

I don’t think many potential athletic directors will be put off enough by Landry’s politics to not want to take the LSU job, although the AD world is substantially more progressive than a football coaches room. Of course, that isn’t saying very much…but you know what I mean.

But what absolutely could prevent quality administrators from wanting to work at LSU would be a fear of being overruled, and potentially humiliated, by the statehouse. If you’re going to walk into a high-pressure, public-facing job, you want to know exactly who your boss is going to be. You want to know exactly who has autonomy over what type of decisions, and who will be accountable for what. If you feel like you can’t trust the Governor, it’s going to be a problem.

And instability in the AD chair can absolutely impact the stability of the head coaching role.

To put it more bluntly, via Dellenger’s story,

This is all a risky game for any politician. The actual Huey Long story, after all, didn’t have a happy ending. 

Here’s what else we worked on this week:

• We turned the paywall on over at NIL-Wire, to help support Kyle and some deeper dives and reporting he’s doing over at our sister publication. For example, on Thursday, Kyle took a look at the mascots who are getting NIL deals. Good thing too…I had no idea how much the dang Syracuse mascot suit costs!

• I talked to Kansas State AD Gene Taylor about why he was so adamantly against the NCAA allowing athletes to bet on professional sports…and how schools can expect to police athletes from engaging in risky gaming behaviors.

• We published all the operating budgets for men’s golf programs in FY24, in case that’s a thing you’re interested in. We can publish the women’s golf data next week, if you’d like.

• And after a few weeks of making calls, I tried to lay out the opportunities, and challenges, in the FCS Playoffs potentially taking private equity investment and moving away from NCAA governance. 

We also uploaded over a hundred new documents to the Extra Points Library, including the conference bylaws from multiple leagues, updated coach contracts in women’s basketball, softball, baseball and volleyball, international travel game contracts, historical MFRS reports, and much more.

We can do all of this stuff, from calling ADs to filing FOIAs to programming computer games to hanging out and answering your questions on camera, because of your support.

You can get every newsletter we write, and support independent media, with an Extra Points subscription.

Thanks for reading, everybody. Have a great weekend, enjoy the candy, and I’ll see you on the internet next week.