Louisiana Voice

I have a great idea to save the State of Loozianner a little money. I’m pretty sure it’s not an original idea because it’s too logical for it not to have occurred to someone else, too. At any rate, here it is:

• Call off the search for a new LSU president.
• Forget about hiring a new athletic director to replace the departing Scott Woodward.
• Abolish the LSU Board of Supervisors altogether.
• Consolidate, consolidate, consolidate. Rebrand Gov. Jeff Landry’s title to Governor/LSU Coach/Athletic Director/President/Board of Supervisors.

Think of all the money it would save. Why, Woodward’s salary alone is more than a million dollars a year. And by now we know what a football coach goes for and college presidents ain’t cheap, either. With all the Board of Supervisor members gone, think of what could be clawed back in terms of complimentary tickets to football, basketball, baseball and all other sports. Why, with those increases in ticket prices, just imagine how much revenue could be generated. And premium parking for those events…Why, they could be money producers for the university as opposed to freebies – especially since those prices are also going up.

By naming Landry to all three positions, he could then drop all pretense to just being an interested onlooker and become far more overt (if possible) in picking coaches, selling tickets, doling out passes to favored politicos, and generally throwing his bantam-weight around like a real-life coach/athletic director/college president.

God knows, he certainly wants to play a role in every aspect of decision-making at LSU. He’s made that quite evident even though officially, he has to pretend to only be concerned about the purse strings.

If you think for one nanosecond that any search committee appointed by a Landry-controlled Board of Supervisors is going to have a scintella of independence to negotiate with and hire a coach, I have some leftover Trump steaks I’ll sell you at a discount.

Landry should know one important fact. If he waltzes in and takes control of administrative matters at LSU, some quality coaches still there are gonna start looking elsewhere. Jay Johnson isn’t going to tolerate interference in a baseball program he has guided to the very top. Same for gymnastics coach Jay Clark and women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey.

There’s an old adage that says if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

One might argue that the football program is indeed broken and folks would be correct in that assumption. But by driving off an athletic director who is responsible in large part in bringing six national titles in six years to LSU, it would be a tragic mistake to try and revamp the entire athletic program – and that’s just what Squeaky Toy Landry is doing.

In short, he thinks he’s a lot smarter than he really is.