In the waning hours of Sunday, Oct. 26, LSU fired football coach Brian Kelly eight games into his fourth season at the school, with Tigers athletic director Scott Woodward noting in a statement that “the success at the level that LSU demands simply did not materialize” under Kelly’s watch.

While Woodward was the one who helped make the call to dismiss Kelly, he won’t be tasked with hiring the coach’s replacement — with no less than the most powerful figure in the state saying so.

During a news conference on Wednesday, Oct. 29, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry said that a committee selected by LSU’s board of supervisors, not Woodward, would be hiring the Tigers’ next football coach.

His thoughts on Woodward’s role in the coaching search didn’t end there, either, with the first-term Republican governor saying he’d let U.S. President Donald Trump pick the LSU coach before he’d let Woodward do the same.

While it may seem counter-intuitive to bar an athletic director from doing one of the most essential functions of their job, Woodward's hardly alone among his colleagues in not being in charge of selecting a new football coach. Shortly after Brent Pry was fired as Virginia Tech's football coach in September, it was reported that Hokies athletic director Whit Babcock would not be involved in the search for Pry's replacement.

Woodward, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana native and an LSU grad, has been the Tigers’ athletic director since 2019. He hired Kelly after the 2021 season, luring him away from Notre Dame in one of the more stunning moves of an eventful coaching carousel.

Woodward has been known for much of his administrative career as someone who made high-profile coaching hires, like he did at LSU in 2021 when he brought aboard Kim Mulkey as the school’s new women’s basketball coach. Two years later, Mulkey led LSU to its first-ever national championship in the sport. Woodward also brought in baseball coach Jay Johnson, who has led the Tigers to the College World Series championship in two of the past three seasons. Another one of his notable coaching hires, men’s basketball coach Matt McMahon, is entering his fourth season at LSU on one of the hotter seats at the power-conference level nationally, with just a 45-53 record to his name.

Among Woodward’s other flashy football coaching hires were Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M after the 2017 season and Chris Petersen at Washington after the 2013 season.

“We are not going down a failed path,” Landry said in his news conference. “I wanted to tell you something — this is a pattern. The guy (Woodward) that’s here now who wrote that contract cost Texas A&M seventy-something million dollars. Right now, we’ve got a $53 million liability. We are not doing that again. And you know what? I believe that we’re going to find a great coach. I may even let President Trump pick it. He loves winners. I’m not going to be picking the next coach, but I can promise you, we’re going to pick a coach and we’re going to make sure that coach is successful and we’re going to make sure that he’s compensated properly and we’re going to put metrics on it. Because I’m tired of rewarding failure in this country.”

While Woodward hired Fisher at Texas A&M, the deal Landry referenced, which netted Fisher a record $77 million buyout in 2023, came in part from a four-year contract extension that was signed in 2021, two years after Woodward had left for LSU.

Kelly’s firing came during something of a power vacuum at LSU, with the university under the guidance of an interim president.

Landry has eagerly helped fill that void. He was reportedly a part of the process that ultimately led to Kelly’s ouster, something an unnamed source described to Yahoo Sports as “the most Louisiana thing ever.” The board of supervisors that will help oversee the hiring of the next coach has Landry’s hands all over it, as well. Since assuming office in January 2024, Landry has appointed six of the board’s 14 members.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Louisiana governor says he'd rather Trump pick next LSU coach than let Tigers AD make hire

Reporting by Craig Meyer, USA TODAY NETWORK / USA TODAY

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