The Governor and College Football

Jeff Landry clashed with LSU and then stayed involved as the school pursued Lane Kiffin. It's quite the American story.

A photo of the Superdome, which is in New Orleans, which is in Louisiana, which is at the center of this newsletter. (Remember I’m both the lead photographer and photo editor, so sometimes we have to get creative with our visuals)

The Governor and College Football

I’m feeling reflective, it being New Year’s Eve and almost the start of another year. So you know what’s cool? Getting to write stories with Sam Fortier, one of my very good college buddies (and my beat partner when the Nationals won the World Series, which now feels like it happened in the Stone Age).

Almost two months ago, Sam and I were in a meeting with a few other writers and editors at the Washington Post, talking about how to cover the rash of massive coaching buyouts in college football. Penn State had fired James Franklin. LSU had JUST fired Brian Kelly. And in that meeting, because the Kelly firing was so fresh, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry kept coming up.

Landry was in the middle of his now-infamous media tour, during which he joked — we think? — that maybe Donald Trump should hire the Tigers’ next head coach. He mixed up some prominent agents in a screed about the bloated, broken college football machine. He made himself the Main Character, really, any expectations of southern decorum be damned.

We left the meeting with an assignment: Call a bunch of people about Landry, his meddling with LSU football, his continued interest in using sports as a political prop, and see what came of it. And that led to a story that published Wednesday morning, which wound up being about a lot of things, Lane Kiffin and politics and private jets among them. But the highlight was something Sam uncovered, which is that Landry pushed LSU officials to formalize — in writing in Kiffin’s contract — that, should the school fire Kiffin before his deal is finished, taxpayers will not pay a cent of what’s still owed to him.

Those officials are still working out the details, though they’re confident the provision will be included in the final version of the contract. Below are two snippets from the story, which I’ll also link again here. And otherwise Happy New Year to you and yours. Catch you all on the other side.

On the behind-the-scenes discussions about Kiffin’s contract:

Landry, though, was oddly quiet after LSU hired Kiffin. Publicly, he had gone from railing against giant contracts to tacitly endorsing this one, congratulating Kiffin and the school on social media. But privately, he made a previously unreported backchannel request of LSU power brokers, John H. Carmouche, chair of the board’s athletics committee, told The Washington Post. According to Carmouche, the board agreed to explore a provision that would formalize — in writing — that someone other than the state would pay all of the buyout money if Kiffin is fired before his contract runs out.

The goal, Carmouche said, is for any potential buyout money to be underwritten by the Tiger Athletic Foundation, the athletic department’s fundraising arm. LSU had not included this kind of provision in previous contracts for marquee coaches such as Kelly, Ed Orgeron, Les Miles, Kim Mulkey and Jay Johnson.

And on the possible political fallout for Landry, including whether some angry LSU fans will remember this saga if he runs for re-election:

Lipsey, the major donor and former board chair, described Landry in a similar way, saying, “As a first-term governor, he got just a little excited and overstepped.” And whether that will trail Landry like some sort of scarlet letter is the subject of statewide debate. Lipsey estimated that 90 percent of Louisianans were unhappy with how Landry acted after LSU fired Kelly, whether they voted for him or not. On the other hand, John Couvillon, a nonpartisan pollster based in Baton Rouge, said Landry’s involvement was a “nothingburger” that won’t affect him if he runs for reelection in 2027.

For a while, Landry moved on to other issues, staying uncharacteristically quiet on LSU sports. He had started the whole saga with a battle cry against a broken system, wagging his finger as he talked, and ended it with some standard-issue governor-speak, congratulating the school in a staid post on X: “I would like to congratulate the great team we have assembled to lead LSU into the future. They have done an outstanding job at recruiting a new head coach!”

But that didn’t last long.

Okay fine, one more link to the story for the road.