Brian Kelly was originally signed to a 10-year, $95 million contract to coach football at LSU. Sunday, a little more than halfway through his fourth season, he was shown the door. His firing followed a humiliating pounding at the hands of No. 3, undefeated Texas A&M on the Tigers’ home field.
That meant that the, BUYOUT OF HIS CONTRACT before negotiations which at this writing, were still ongoing, carried a face value of $54 million, the second-largest buyout of a coach’s contract in NCAA history.
The record buyout, by the way, was the eyepopping $77 MILLION owed Jimbo Fisher by A&M when he was axed in 2023.
Kelly and Fisher have a common denominator (besides both having coached at LSU where Fisher was an LSU assistant under coaches Nick Saban and Les Miles). That common thread that links the two is Scott Woodward.
While serving as athletic director at A&M it was Woodward who signed Fisher to a 10-year, $75 million contract in December 2017. The A&M Board of Regents extended that contract through the 2031 season in 2021. A clause in his contract stipulated that should he be fired without cause before Dec. 1, 2021, he would be owed a whopping $95.6 million. Alas, he was canned after a disappointing start to the 2023 season and his contract was bought out for $77.5 million.
Of course, Woodward, a native of Baton Rouge, moved back home in 2000 and was responsible for the hiring of Kelly to that $95 million pact on Nov. 30, 2021. Obviously, Woodward wasn’t around for Fisher’s firing – he left A&M but the fact remains that he was the one responsible for hiring both coaches.
The LSU Board of Supervisors and Woodward would be financially prudent to follow the example of one Walter O’Malley, owner of the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers from 1950-1979. He had a manager named Walter Alston to whom he signed to 23 consecutive one-year contracts, from 1954-1976. All Alston did was win seven National League pennants and four World Series titles. None of that multi-year contract business for O’Malley. Consecutive one-year contracts seemed to be sufficient incentive for Alston to win and win he did.
Of course, the business of sports has changed drastically and there are no more one-year contracts. Players and coaches alike demand security while the rest of us go to work each day never knowing when a hedge fund is going to buy our employer and lay us off and relegate us to the scrap heap of the unemployment line.
Fair or not, that’s the direction the mega-dollar of sports has taken us and we appear to have gone along for the ride willingly and without complaint.
So, we’ve come a long way since Paul Dietzel became LSU’s head coach in 1955 at a salary of $12,000 per year (Les Miles chewed that much in grass during a single game), which by the way, was about average for a time when football was a game and not a business.
Louisiana Voice 
LSU is among the “blue bloods” of college football. At this level there are only a handful of coaches you’d trust your program to and every one of them is going to cost LSU more than the coach is earning at his current school. Isn’t that how capitalism works? You invest your money and hope for a return? And sometimes you lose your money. Yes it would be great if people were as passionate about curing cancer as beating Alabama, at least with their pocketbooks. But people have always demanded entertainment, some distraction from the daily grind, and are willing to spend money on it. I’m sure that in 1955 there were many who thought it outrageous to pay Dietzel $12K per year. Nothing has changed on either side of the debate, except inflation.
Also, I’d much rather Scott Woodward make the hire than Jeff Landry. The worst possible outcome for LSU is Jeff Landry thinking he has anything to contribute to LSU football.
[…] I did not mention Scott Woodward in my previous article, but what if I told you that we are really coming full circle. From Tom Aswell at Louisiana Voice: […]