After Texas A&M all but directly bullied the LSU Tigers into firing Brian Kelly, sending this coaching cycle into complete overdrive, there were a lot of Tiger fans who were thanking the Aggies. Kelly's reputation over in Baton Rouge had taken a huge hit over the course of this season, and many fans of the Bayou Bengals were ready to be done with him.
It went beyond just friendly thanks, however— there is a significant contingent of LSU fans saying that, with Kelly now out the door, LSU is poised to return to an era where the Tigers dominated the matchup with the Aggies— and, in that vein, the Aggies had unintentionally sealed their fate.
That kind of bravado began to wilt yesterday as it became clear just how this search would be going for the Tigers. With no acting president of LSU, the actual governor of Louisiana met with the gathered media to speak on the coaching search, and one thing was evident. The Aggies may have consigned the Tigers to something far worse than the Brian Kelly era: bumbling bureaucratic mismanagement.
LSU's hasty firing of Brian Kelly after shellacking by Texas A&M means Tigers' future is cloudier than ever
The most notable quote from the press conference was the governor floating the idea— in a tongue-in-cheek manner, of course— that President Trump could be responsible for choosing the next coach. The context of that quote, though, is what should be concerning to LSU fans: the governor said that, under no circumstances, will the currently-employed Athletic Director of the school be choosing the next coach.
If that's not organizational dysfunction, I don't know what is. The governor mentioned that it would be LSU's board of supervisors that would be responsible for this decision, which seemed to come as a surprise to at least one member of that board:
LSU Board of Supervisor's chair Scott Ballard reacts to Governor Jeff Landry's statement regarding the search for the next head LSU football coach.
— WBRZ News (@WBRZ) October 29, 2025
to learn more: https://t.co/BbLDa8zAl7 pic.twitter.com/KM8h0K2OJ6
Things are going great, in other words.
Look, if things get all complicated— as they so often tend to do in coaching searches— at least LSU has a safe fallback option! It looks like Coach O will take their call:
“Do you want to be the next LSU head coach?”
— Baton Rouge Boot Krewe Media (@BatonRougeBKM) October 29, 2025
Coach O: “I’d love to. Are you kidding me?”
(via ESPN) pic.twitter.com/ntj6B2Ghbo
Please let this happen.
Edit to add: things are getting juicy pretty quickly.