Circus act

 Louisiana State University once was a place where Paul Dietzel won a natty, where Billy Cannon ran back a fabled Halloween night punt, where Les Miles and Ed Orgeron rode Matt Flynn and Joe Burrow to national titles of their own.

Now it's just a bear on a bicycle, a flying trapeze and 14 clowns in a tiny car.

It's the place where the athletic director, Scott Woodward, agreed to a $50-plus-million buyout to get rid of Brian Kelly, because if he hadn't someone else would have. And it's the place where the governor of the state, Huey Long (sorry, Jeff Landry) publicly says there's no way he's going to let Scott Woodward negotiate the next deal because now the state was on the hook for the $50-million-plus buyout, even though the big-money donors will likely pick it up.

Yesterday, Scott Woodward got the gate, too. Probably was inevitable the first time Jeff Landry opened his mouth.

At any rate, LSU now has no football coach and no athletic director, and political analyst/gadfly/LSU grad James Carville, his voice thick with the bayou, is wondering who the (bad word) will want to come to Baton Rouge NOW. And, yes, it's a total circus act -- in which case who can say Carville, as southern-fried wacky as he can be sometimes, is completely wrong?

Oh, LSU will get someone, and it will probably be a Name of some consequence, because LSU still has Billy Cannon and a couple of nattys and some Heisman Trophy winners in its cupboard. And it's still an SEC job, the creme-de-la-creme of conferences according to every SEC shill who forgets Mississippi State is an SEC school.

But if you're firing Woodward because he threw a poop-ton of money at Brian Kelly even though Kelly couldn't even win a natty at Notre Dame, for heaven's sake, you're forgetting that the market pretty much dictates that sort of reckless spending. As the Blob pointed out just the other day, college football is a lawless, money-bloated landscape these days -- an NIL/transfer portal Wild West where fixes happen at cartoon speed, and two or three or four bad losses will cost Coach Slobberknocker his job.

And not at the end of the season, either, the way it used to be. Right smack dab in the middle of it.

It's happened to seven Power 4 and 10 FBS coaches so far this season, and it's not just LSU that's paying for its we-didn't-win-a-natty-yesterday impatience. Penn State owes James Franklin almost as much as LSU owes Kelly. Oklahoma State and Florida owes Mike Gundy and Billy Napier eight figures as well.

 The message from the LSUs of the world: If you come here, you better win and you better win right now. And we're talking about the Chicken Joint Radial Tire Bowl, we're talking about the national championship.

Which gets us back to Carville's question: In such an environment, what coach with a rep (and in his right mind) is going to go anywhere big without a cushy insurance policy? Specifically, LSU, which just fired its AD in large part because he agreed to a cushy insurance policy?

Just imagine the interview process, going forward ...

LSU: Now, Coach, we'd love to have you, and we're willing to spring for MAJOR DOLLARS to do so, but you'd better deliver a natty by your third or fourth year. 

Coach: And if I don't?

LSU: Well, we'll find someone who will.

Coach: OK. If that happens, what's my buyout deal? 'Cause I have to protect myself financially.

LSU: Well, it will be a lot.

Coach: Eight figures? Seven?

LSU: Oh, heavens, no. That would be fiscally irresponsible.

At which point Coach heads for the door.

And LSU ends up James Carville as its head coach.