LSU set to part ways with Scott Woodward as coaching search begins

LSU and current athletic director Scott Woodward are set to part ways in the near future, first reported by Pete Thamel of ESPN. This comes after Louisiana governor Jeff Landry openly bashed Woodward’s past two football hires and repeatedly said he will not be hiring the football coach this time around.

Verge Ausberry will be the interim athletic director until a new president is appointed and then LSU and that new president make a decision on who the next person in charge of LSU athletics will be.

LSU fired Brian Kelly on Sunday and since then has begun to put together the wheels in motion to start on the new coaching search and it became clear that Landry did not want Woodward involved.

“We are not going down a failed path,” Landry said. “This is a pattern. The guy that wrote that contract cost Texas A&M 70 something million dollars. We’ve got a 53 million dollar liability. We are not doing that again. I believe we’re going to find a great coach — maybe we’ll let President Trump pick it, he loves winners — I’m not gonna be picking the next coach, but I can promise you we’re going to pick a coach and make sure he’s successful. We’re going to make sure he’s compensated properly and we’re going to put metrics on it because I’m tired of rewarding failure in this country, then leaving the tax payers to foot the bill.”

With the coaching search hardly even in the beginning stages, LSU is still without a president and is now looking for an AD before any progress is made with a new head football coach. There are several moving pieces throughout the state right now in the aftermath of firing Kelly, but one thing that Landry has made perfectly clear is that LSU’s current athletic director Scott Woodward will not be in charge of making the final decision.

Landry regularly references Woodward’s hiring of Jimbo Fisher who was fired at Texas A&M and owed over $70 million — the largest buyout in college football history. Pair that with the failures of Kelly and it’s clear there will be someone else, or a group of people, in charge. Landry said the university’s Board of Supervisors would put a committee together to help find Brian Kelly’s replacement.

“I can tell you right now, Scott Woodward is not selecting the next coach, hell I’ll let Donald Trump select it before I let him,” Landry said. “I don’t know [who it is], but the board of directors is going to form a committee and they’re going to find us a coach. Y’all reporters have to start looking into the people that represent these coaches, the agents. Woodward’s agent, Kelly’s agent, the Texas A&M agent, they’re all the same agent. This is ridiculous. Lawyers would be disbarred if they acted how these agents acted. It’s time for the NCAA to put in some guard rails for college sports.”

Woodward was named the LSU athletic director in April of 2019 and has hired Kim Mulkey in women’s basketball, Jay Johnson in baseball, Matt McMahon in men’s basketball, and Brian Kelly in football. LSU won national championships in baseball, women’s basketball, and gymnastics under his watch.