BATON ROUGE – It was a while back when the schedule makers at the SEC office in Birmingham realized the annual LSU vs. Alabama football game was a big deal.
Conference and national championship races are usually on the line.
The league decided it was best that both teams have an open date each year before they play. It only reasoned that a recovery week from the grind of a long season and a two-week buildup to the game would produce a battle worthy of the best national TV time slot offered to the conference.
So as No. 4 Alabama and LSU prepare to meet Saturday at 6:30 p.m. in Tuscaloosa, here’s how the two programs spent their open dates last week.
The 7-1 Crimson Tide, winners of six straight games after losing their season opener, worked in virtual anonymity. They exhaled and enjoyed a quiet week of self-evaluation.
And 5-3 LSU, losers of three straight?
It watched the optimism and progress of a proud, nationally renowned athletic program be erased by delusional power-hungry Governor Jeff Landry and his suck-up political appointee minions known as the LSU Board of Supervisors.
If last Sunday’s firing of Tigers’ head football coach Brian Kelly and Thursday’s firing of athletics director Scott Woodward weren’t bad enough, somebody decided to schedule an 8 a.m. Friday press conference.
Was it for clarity? Or future plans? Or to deliver a kumbaya message of tranquility?
The presser featured newly minted interim athletic director Verge Ausberry, a former two-time LSU football captain who had served in numerous athletic department positions.
Flanking Johnson on each shoulder were Board of Supervisors lackies Scott “Mutually Agreed” Ballard and John “Joint Decision” Carmouche.
They proved to be as informative as crash test dummies.
Both were asked about Woodward’s firing and both stuck to the party line that Woodward’s firing on Thursday night had nothing to do with the runty Landry publicly promising on Wednesday during a press briefing that Woodward would not be involved in selecting LSU’s next football coach.
Ballard, the Board of Supervisors chairman, led off the sunrise special press conference, confirming LSU’s spin on Woodward’s departure.
“Last night, Scott Woodward and LSU mutually agreed to part ways on behalf of the Board of Supervisors and the LSU family. . . I want to thank Scott for his six years as our athletic director and wish him well in his future pursuits,” said Ballard, who didn’t bother to fake an ounce of sincerity. “He was a great LSU Tiger, good friend, good person.”
Ballard then introduced Carmouche, the Board of Supervisors member serving as chair of its athletic committee. Carmouche’s charge was to introduce Ausberry as interim athletic director.
But he also again defended Landry’s clandestine involvement in firing Woodward.
“The governor is not involved, the governor was worried about the state of Louisiana,” Carmouche said. “His concern had to do with the state contract. The LSU Board of Supervisors and Mr. Woodward decided jointly to part ways.”
Carmouche also delivered the big rah-rah buildup while introducing Ausberry, ending with this phony proclamation:
“This is the greatest athletics program in the country, and we will continue to be an elite destination for student athletes, coaches and staff,” he said.
Yes, the greatest athletics program in the country allows its snooty governor to repeatedly interject his uneducated ignorance in athletic department matters.
Last November at LSU’s home game vs. Alabama, Landry insisted on reviving the tradition of having a live Tiger in a cage at an LSU football game. The school, in accordance with the wishes of PETA, stopped rolling the live Mike the Tiger mascot in pregame years ago.
But Landry ignored LSU’s request and got a live Tiger belonging to a former circus performer who had faced numerous animal abuse allegations.
Last March, appearing on Fox News, Landry criticized LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey for she and her team remaining in the locker room during the playing of the national anthem before an NCAA Tournament game.
Many college teams don’t take the floor until after the anthem. But that didn’t stop Landry from shooting off his mouth, threatening to pull athletic scholarships for what he said was an act of disrespect for the country.
Landry’s detonation of LSU’s athletic department and national respect last week is just another step in how he’s systematically destroying this state’s flagship university.
Since the vindictive dweeb began forcing LSU away from its diversity, equity and inclusion policy, the amount of administrative carnage left in his wake is staggering.
According to reporter Piper Hutchinson of Louisiana Illuminator, Woodward is the sixth top LSU administrator shoved out the door by Landry’s political overreach.
The others have been President William Tate, Provost Roy Haggerty, LSU Health Shreveport Chancellor David Guzick, chief administrative officer Kimberly Lewis and general counsel Winston DeCuir.
Tate, Lewis and DeCuir are black. Alena Allen, the first black dean of the LSU Law Center, also left. Nearly every top black administrator at the university has been forced to exit.
Which makes it even more ironic that for last Friday’s presser, Ausberry, the only black among the six highest-ranking employees in LSU’s athletic department administration, was chosen to be Mr. Sunny Side Up.
“I want to know our fan base to know one thing,” Ausberry said. “LSU is not broken. The LSU athletic department is not broken. I think we have the best athletic department in the country. I think we have the best staff in the country. The executive team is second to none. I put them up against anyone. They’re the best, and they will get the job done. Our coaches are second to none.”
It’s an athletic department put together by Woodward. It’s a roster of head coaches in various sports, 11 hired by Woodward. It was a feeling among all coaches in every sport that they had an athletic director truly invested in the success and well-being of their programs and athletes.
But it all wiped away, as history unfortunately repeats, by a governor who believes LSU and its athletics are his business.
So, in respectful disagreement with Ausberry, a good, honorable man with a genuine love of his university, LSU is very broken.
It doesn’t matter who will be chosen as school president on Tuesday, whether it’s McNeese State President Wade Rousse (said to be Landry’s pick), former University of Arizona President Robert Robbins, or University of Alabama Provost James Dalton.
And it makes no difference which head football coach will fill the LSU vacancy, hopefully someone strong enough to ignore the political dysfunction that invariably devalues any of the school’s accomplishments.
Because as long as the governor is empowered to appoint every member of the school’s Board of Supervisors, such as Vice Chairman and Landry appointee Lee Mallett, who’s a major Landry campaign donor, LSU is nothing but a political football.
And a deflated one, at that.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com