LSU and Florida are both considered, at least on paper, to be among the Top 10 college football coaching jobs in the country.
Both now have openings, after Florida fired Billy Napier on Oct. 19 and LSU cut loose Brian Kelly last Sunday. But shenanigans in Baton Rouge, led by Gov. Jeff Landry, have lifted Florida ahead of LSU in the pecking order, SEC Network analyst Paul Finebaum said Saturday.
“On Monday, the LSU job was the best job in the country,” Finebaum said on SEC Nation. “Thanks to the governor. Florida is right now. He’s really helped his state immensely. I think they can come back to it, though. Really, the most surprising part of this week is it really wasn’t that surprising. We’re so used to this now in college football that the biggest earthquake I have ever seen is now on Saturday, we’ll go, ‘OK, like, what’s next?’
“But ultimately, Florida was a big winner this week because that job was always great. It’s now a little bit more attractive because if you’re a head coach and you’re looking to go to LSU, do you want to deal with this chaos? It’s a lot to comprehend when you have no earthly idea who you’re working for and who’s in charge of the people that you’ll be working for.”
As Finebaum noted, Landry essentially forced athletics director Scott Woodward to fire Kelly, then spearheaded the movement that led to Woodward’s departure on Thursday. During a press conference on Wednesday, Landry stated flatly that the LSU Board of Supervisors (the equivalent of trustees) would make the next coaching hire and questioned the practice of schools giving coaching contract buyouts of more than $50 million as LSU did with Kelly.
Despite the instability at LSU (the school now has an interim president, athletics director and head football coach), the Tigers still have top-level facilities and fan support, as well as access to many of the top players in the country. And unlike Florida, LSU does not share its state will any other power-conference programs.
“I think the reality of this is that both of them are great jobs,” fellow SEC Nation analyst Tim Tebow said. “They’re top 10 jobs in college football. And if you just make the next right decision and who you’re going to hire as president and AD and to get the next right coach, all of this will be forgotten. We want to make it a really big deal, but if you just make the next right decision, it’s not going to be a big deal at the start of next season. Nobody will remember this.
“… I think Florida is an amazing job, but I also want to be very clear. I think LSU is one of the best jobs in the country for a few reasons. One, because you have great talent in Louisiana. Two, you’re not competing against other in state school schools. You got some good schools, I’m not knocking them, but they’re not LSU. Right? It is a great job. Florida is also a great job. Both of them. This is whoever you want to talk to, you can argue it. And honestly, I don’t think anybody really knows. Both of them are Top 10 jobs. And if you get the right coach, both of them can competing for championships maybe next year, if not the year after that.”
Roman Harper, also a member of the SEC Nation crew, played nine of his 11 NFL seasons with the New Orleans Saints. He said he also believes Florida has surpassed LSU in the coaching pecking order.
“You have a lot of outside factors that go into this whole thing,” Harper said. “Like Paul alluded to earlier, with the governor really stepping in and really making this whole thing turn it into a little bit of a chaos situation. Instead of now we can’t just focus on what Tim’s talking about, which is just hiring the next best coach for the LSU football team. And now we’re focused on everything else that’s going on.
“And now are we sure that LSU is going to get the right president? Are we sure they’re going to get the right athletic director? … Because there’s so many outside things out there and because of all of this talk and what I know about the state of Louisiana, Florida is now the better job. If I’m a coach looking at where I want to go to, … if I go to the University of Florida right now versus LSU, I don’t know if you only can just worry about football because of everything else going on.”
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