One thing I say again and again, and people don’t think I’m serious about it, is that Louisianans will generally base their estimation of how the state is doing on how LSU’s football team fares on Saturdays in the fall.

It’s true. And it isn’t altogether irrational.

The best example of this was John Bel Edwards utterly wrecking the state in his first term as governor and getting re-elected in 2019 nevertheless. Literally the only thing happening in Louisiana not crying out for massive change at that point was LSU’s football team, which had an immaculate season and won a national championship that year. The state’s economy was in the toilet, crime and outmigration were tearing at the very fabric of our society, the state’s budget had nearly doubled in four years with no discernible positive benefit, and yet Edwards managed to survive.

So of course he showed up on TV in New York for Joe Burrow’s Heisman award.

LSU football is an incredibly stupid barometer of how Louisiana is faring, but there is a certain logic to all this.

Which is that Joe Six Pack of Kinder, Louisiana has been around long enough to know it’s exceptionally unlikely the state will ever be made safe from criminals, or that it will provide decent roads, or a tax climate conducive to business formation, or any of the other basics of quality government. Joe Six Pack has given up on all of that.

So he votes for politicians who take social conservative positions, because he’s hoping that’s something of a marker for not engaging in other policies which would make things worse, and he demands that the Tigers play for championships.

Because if LSU can win championships on the football field, that means the state has to be competitive with its neighbors at least to some extent.

I’m not saying this is smart analysis. It isn’t. But it’s analysis a lot of people engage in.

We have a low standard for political leadership and a high standard for athletic leadership, because this is what our people are conditioned to believe is possible.

So Bill Tate, whom Edwards installed as LSU’s president and who presided over the utter destruction of the school’s admissions standards while furthering its descent into status as a woke indoctrination factory, was hailed by lots of LSU fans as a great leader. Why? Because Tate was a big cheerleader for the school’s sports teams, and while he was president, LSU won national championships in baseball, twice, gymnastics and women’s basketball – not to mention that Jayden Daniels won the Heisman.

They all think Tate was great. But other than trailing in a ton of research dollars and blowing up LSU’s enrollment by taking practically anybody who applied, there is very little reason to believe Bill Tate was good for LSU.

Now that he’s off to Rutgers, people are beginning to wake up to the fact that LSU isn’t actually in good shape as a university. The fact that there have been shootings on LSU’s campus twice on game days this year has opened a lot of eyes to how a criminal element is encroaching on the state’s flagship university. LSU’s flagging academic performance is beginning to show up as a problem.

And of course, everybody is up in arms about the fact that Brian Kelly’s fourth football team at LSU is the worst of the bunch despite most people thinking it has the most talented roster of the four teams. After losing to Vanderbilt on Saturday, they’re now all but out of the playoff chase and certainly should be – it’s more than halfway through the season, and LSU has yet to score 25 points against an FBS opponent. Six tries, and 24 points is the best they can do!

There is a consensus among LSU’s fans – and the national media, too, now – that Kelly was a bad hire and should go.

But the problem is that LSU’s athletic director Scott Woodward signed Kelly to a 10-year, $100 million contract. Firing Kelly, which could well be an abject necessity if he loses to Texas A&M and Alabama the next two weeks and falls to 5-4 on the season, will be a savagely expensive decision.

And certainly not one that Woodward ought to be allowed to escape responsibility for.

It beggars belief that you could put your organization on the hook for a $100 million bad investment and not lose your job. That Woodward has now done this not once but twice – he hired a declining Jimbo Fisher while AD at Texas A&M, and that disaster will have cost the Aggies $76 million by 2031 when Fisher’s buyout is finally paid in full – makes him a serial fiscal arsonist.

It’s utterly insane to think Woodward would be allowed to replace Kelly. If Kelly is to be fired, Woodward would have to go, too.

And LSU has an interim president in charge of the place with these headaches looming?

No.

Historically, we’ve written here at The Hayride that the LSU presidency is a position which requires a national search. We come to that notion because LSU’s all-time greatest leader was Mark Emmert, who showed what the school could be, and Emmert was an up-and-coming president at the University of Connecticut when LSU landed him. Emmert set to work insisting on excellence, and he dragged the university kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

It’s largely stagnated ever since.

So the temptation – it’s very reasonable to think this, mind you – is to say that the proper procedure is to hire a search firm and go national in looking for the next Emmert.

The problem is, that’s exactly what Bobby Jindal’s folks did in his second term. And following that procedure is what got us F. King Alexander, who wokified LSU and put the university on a path of scandal and destruction it hasn’t recovered from.

There are no more Mark Emmerts out there. The university administrators getting acclaim from their peers now are the Hard Left wokesters who spend their time on ESG and DEI. You can’t even move up in academia without paying obeisance to the satanic ideologies which dominate on campuses.

LSU’s search committee did something interesting instead of hiring a search firm. They actually consulted with the people at Hillsdale College on how to find somebody who could reverse the leftism and decline infecting LSU.

And, I’m told, the Hillsdale people suggested LSU go right down the road and hire Wade Rousse from McNeese State.

Rousse has only been the president there for little over a year. He was the Executive Vice President at McNeese for five years before that. He was also an administrator at Northern Arizona before returning to McNeese.

He isn’t an LSU guy, which means it’s not a good old boy hire. Rousse is nonetheless a South Louisiana Cajun; he went to high school at South Lafourche, briefly played football at McNeese before graduating from Nicholls State, then got his MBA at the University of New Orleans, and then a PhD in economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He’s worked in the business world as well as university administration and he’s been a professor.

Rousse’s effect on McNeese has been pronounced. That school was declining into oblivion before he got there. It saw declining enrollment for 14 straight years, and then this fall it saw a 22 percent enrollment increase. They’re setting up an extensive job placement regime to help their graduates, and they’re pushing the university’s role in driving economic development in and around Lake Charles.

One of the manifestations of that we’ve covered was the LNG Center of Excellence that Rousse set up, which is essentially a think tank about natural gas production, transmission and export. As Lake Charles is becoming the nation’s hub for liquefied natural gas with all the export terminals being built there, that’s a no-brainer of a decision but also it’s an aggressive move which shows some energy and gumption on the part of a school president.

LSU hasn’t had anybody running the place with that kind of sand since Emmert.

But closer to home for the Joe Six Packs of the world, Rousse spearheaded the hiring of Will Wade as McNeese’s basketball coach three years ago when he was the school’s EVP. That was a very ballsy hire; at the time, Wade was considered radioactive because of the “scandal” surrounding his alleged paying of players while at LSU. One interpretation of this was that Wade was running an NIL program off the books a couple of years before it was legal; in any event, it was thought before McNeese hired him that Wade would have to coach in junior colleges and at NAIA schools because nobody would touch him.

But Rousse saw the opportunity hiring a great basketball coach would be for McNeese, and landed Wade.

Two years later they’d been to the NCAA Tournament twice, won more than 60 games and Will Wade is now at NC State with a big contract, his past problems in history’s dustbin. And McNeese’s enrollment is up, and the school’s prestige and name recognition is better than ever.

Plus, Hillsdale is saying he’s the guy they’d hire if they were LSU.

Rousse is who Gov. Jeff Landry wants. If John Bel Edwards could force Bill Tate on LSU, then Landry ought to have the power to impose Rousse on the in-crowd at the university. Unlike Tate, who’d risen in academic circles writing scholarly papers on such topics as the racism inherent in math, there is actual reason to believe Rousse could do some good with LSU’s resources.

And with the accelerating decline on campus and the necessity to make real decisions and major changes, there is little time to lose. You can’t just fire Brian Kelly and call it a day; all that does is put LSU on the hook for $50-60 million with no reason to believe the next football coach won’t also be an expensive failure. There must be smart, permanent, empowered and accountable leadership at the top in order to safeguard these decisions.

This week would be an excellent time to move forward with the hire of a new president. The current semester will be over before we know it, and LSU needs a new president as soon as possible. Rousse appears to be that man, and so this hire must happen.

Quickly, please.