I was on Brian Haldane’s show this morning on Talk 107.3 FM in Baton Rouge, and so some of you have probably heard a lot of what follows.

If you missed it, here’s the audio…

A quick summary, and maybe a few extra items will follow.

So first of all, we should play the video of Gov. Jeff Landry yesterday at a press conference called to announce that the state is going to move some money around to keep the SNAP food stamps program from vanishing amid the federal government shutdown and no federal dollars coming down to pay for it. Landry catches a question from a reporter on the LSU football coaching situation, and, well, he had plenty to say…

Was it unconventional? Sure. That’s fair to say. Did it scare the hell out of a lot of people? Judging by a lot of the reaction, yep.

Is this how I would have handled it? Probably not.

But other than a couple of details – like where he got a little tongue-tied talking about protecting the interests of the taxpayers when this is all going to be private money funding buyouts and hirings, and when he mentioned Jimbo Fisher’s contract at Texas A&M and the size of the buyout; Brian and I talked about that during the segment and he noted that Fisher’s contract was renegotiated after Woodward left there while I made the point that A&M would still have been on the hook for about $38.5 million under the terms of the original deal when it was bought out – Landry wasn’t wrong in anything he said.

And a lot of the people caterwauling about Landry – Matt Moscona, who’s a Catholic High alum and a big Scott Woodward backer, is on YouTube claiming that Landry has “blown up” the LSU coaching search, for one example – desperately need to take a Xanax.

It’s like they didn’t listen to Landry, but instead constructed a straw man version of him in their heads and listened to the straw man.

The main accusation is that this is a “politicization” of the firing/hiring process. That the governor getting involved is a poisoning of the process.

To which I’ve got to respond: you’re a little late.

And I wasn’t in the room so I’ll qualify this by saying it’s what I’m hearing and I don’t know it for certain, but the context of Landry going off in that press conference in response to that question is very interesting.

Two things appear to be going on, based on word I’ve gotten. First, there’s a good deal of politicking going on by the status quo mob at and around LSU – and Woodward, the athletic director whose rather negligent work on these contracts brought Landry down from the governor’s mansion in the first place, has been fingered as one of the politickers.

He’s trying to save his job, obviously, and he knows that if Wade Rousse, the likely choice for LSU’s next president and Landry’s favorite, gets 10 votes from the LSU Board of Supervisors at its meeting on Tuesday, Scott Woodward will be done at LSU. So trying to stop Rousse from getting those 10 votes has supposedly been occupying some not-insignificant portion of Woodward’s attention.

The other thing which is happening is that Jimmy Sexton, whose firm seemingly represents all the coaches, athletic directors and even players in college football, which Landry noted is not exactly the most ethical thing we’ve seen, has apparently been working to drum up demand among LSU’s board members, boosters and other influencers for his client Lane Kiffin, the current coach at Ole Miss.

Kiffin is leaving Oxford if he can. He made that clear when he was offered a raise and extension by Ole Miss and decided he’d hold off on signing it. He’s also saying “it’s not about money” in answer to the question of what would govern his next career decision.

So Sexton’s game is to get as many LSU people clamoring for Kiffin as he can so that he can jack up the university for some outrageous, massive contract that breaks the bank and obligates LSU until the next civil war breaks out.

With these two things going on, you really shouldn’t be worried about Landry politicizing the search. Not having a president who would then be responsible for the decision and then having all of these people jockeying and scrambling for position is what’s politicizing the search. Landry is simply the one trying to keep it within guardrails until his man is in charge in the president’s office.

And whatever you might think of his tone, that’s what Landry did. He said that the 10-year, $150 million guaranteed contract Jimmy Sexton wants to buffalo LSU into for Lane Kiffin isn’t going to fly, and it’s not going to fly because the only guy out there who gives out stupid contracts like that to more or less total strangers (like Kelly was) is Scott Woodward and he just had a really bad haircut given to him in front of the whole world.

This isn’t a bad thing if you’re an LSU fan. It’s actually a really good thing. It means you aren’t going to have to spend the next decade terrified of the athletic department going bankrupt if the football coach decides he’d rather drink wine than break down game tape and starts getting boatraced in front of the home folks on ABC.

And it won’t scare away anybody. As Landry said, he’s not making the hire. The president, with a search committee in tow, will do that. And Woodward, whose two most consequential hires at LSU to date are Kelly and Matt McMahon, won’t.

This really ought to be what you want. If he’s caustic in saying it, well…

We’ve had a lot of smooth talkers in powerful positions around here lately. I’m not sure the results have been so hot.

Maybe let this thing cook awhile and try not to overreact to every damn thing.