Pop Goes the Weasel! LSU athletic director Joe Alleva is "resigning"
Boarding a plane as news leaked that LSU athletic director Joe Alleva had “resigned” Wednesday morning was perfect timing for me.
Within 30 minutes, we were above the clouds closer to God where I could personally thank Him for getting rid of the worst athletic director I’ve encountered in five decades of covering college sports.
Alleva resigned when he finally realized the few remaining supporters he had – you could probably fit all of them in a pirogue – no longer had his back.
In fact, they joined others, including many key LSU big-money donors in putting a collective hand on Alleva’s back to shove him to another part of campus.
He'll be given the title as special assistant to the president for donor relations, which makes sense because donors might like him slightly more now that he's not athletic director.
The decision to oust Alleva was made at an LSU Board of Supervisors executive meeting on Tuesday night.
Since not all board members were involved, some are reportedly don’t agree with the decision. Of course, this group is a collection of political appointments who couldn’t be unanimous when ordering a McDonald’s happy meal.
As for Alleva, he’ll be a missing person no one misses at all.
Disengaged, arrogant, invisible, non-responsive. Pick a negative word or phrase, and Alleva’s been all that and more.
The only time Mr. Groundhog ever really popped his head publicly out of his office is when he announced another one of his mediocre head coaching hires such as Trent Johnson and Johnny Jones in men’s basketball, Nikki Fargas in women’s basketball.
Yes, he did hire LSU softball coach Beth Torina, who has made the Tigers a perennial College World Series contender.
He hired current LSU basketball coach Will Wade. He also suspended Wade (upon the orders of LSU President F. King Alexander) for the last month because Wade was advised by his attorney not to meet with Alleva and the NCAA to discuss Wade’s alleged illegal recruiting dialogue on an FBI transcript.
Of course, when Alleva announced Wade’s reinstatement on Sunday night, it was via an e-mailed press release, which is no surprise.
He basically communicated with the outside world – fans and media alike -- by his self-serving e-mails.
Face-to-face contact?
It was completely out of the question, because he’d have to hear long-time season ticket holders complain about the constant ticket price increases. Or about turning too much free parking at football games into paid parking. Or about taking previously free tailgate space and flipping it to paid tailgates. Or the lousy traffic flow that causes fans to sit in traffic, many times as the clock slips past midnight. Or the concessions which Alleva thinks actually have improved.
Those elements, combined with the fact every LSU game is on TV thanks to the SEC Network, are some reasons why there are more and more empty seats in Tiger Stadium.
Instead of making it easier for fans to go to games, Alleva made it harder.
Who wants to buy an overpriced ticket, pay a steep price to park and still walk a mile or so to the game where they will be rendered deaf by a public address system playing obnoxious music jacked to the decibel levels of a Blue Angels flyover?
Alleva, after his 10 terrible years as Duke’s athletic director, never should have been hired by LSU in April 2008.
All Alleva did at Duke was throw three Duke men's lacrosse players under the bus when they were accused of rape charges of which they were exonerated and hire a baseball coach accused by a group of players of suggesting they use steroids.
Also, his first two head football coach hires had a combined record 6-62 in the Atlantic Coast Conference over nine seasons.
With that kind of track record, why did the LSU Board of Supervisors provide Alleva with a golden parachute out of Durham, N.C.?
At LSU, he allowed former head football coach Les Miles to hold him for ransom twice. Alleva was milked for pay raises when Miles and his agent flirted with job openings at Michigan after the 2010 season and at Arkansas after the 2012 season.
Then, there was the failure to fire Miles in November 2015 after LSU conducted negotiations for several weeks with Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher’s agent Jimmy Sexton.
When Alleva fired Miles four games into the 2016 season, he had two months to find a coach. He found his man, Houston coach Tom Herman, but gave him a lowball offer of $5 million annually knowing that Herman was seeking more than $6 million.
Considering Alleva’s laundry list of gaffes, how did he keep his job this long?
Because King Alexander knew Alleva kept the athletic budget in the black.
But finally, even that wasn’t enough.
After suspending Wade, there was enough backlash from boosters with the thickest wallets to get Alleva ousted.
There are some obvious candidates to replace Alleva, including in-house interim athletic Verge Ausberry.
But there may not be anyone more suited to the job than Baton Rouge native Scott Woodward, who has been Texas A&M’s athletic director since January 2016.
Woodward, a 1981 graduate of Catholic High and 1985 graduate of LSU, was LSU’s Vice Chancellor of External Affairs from 2000-2004.
He served in a similar role at the University of Washington from 2004-2008, then taking over as athletic director through 2015 until he moved on to A&M.
In his first three years at A&M, every sports program has participated in postseason play and six teams have produced nine SEC championships. All but one of A&M's scholarship teams reached the postseason in 2017-18 when A&M was one of only 12 schools to have a bowl football team and both the men’s and women’s basketball teams reach the NCAA postseason tournament.
Woodward also accomplished something Alleva couldn’t – hire Fisher away from Florida State. He also recently hired Virginia Tech’s Buzz Williams as men’s basketball coach
Swiping Woodward away from A&M may be difficult. He, along with Alabama’s Greg Byrne, are the highest paid athletic directors in the SEC at $900,000 annually.
As evidenced with the Fisher hiring, it’s hard to outbid those filthy rich Aggies.
Just last September in an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Woodward was asked if he would ever return to LSU as athletic director.
"I have no intention and no desire to go anywhere else," Woodward said. “People forget that I've been gone (nearly) 15 years now. I love it here. I love the people, the university and the commitment to education. Until they don't want me, I want to be here."
But there’s also this from Woodward in a 2008 interview with the Seattle Times:
“Attending LSU transformed my life," he said. "Every time I walk on campus it gives me goose bumps. I hate to sound Pollyannaish but it's really true. It had such an influence on me. To have a chance to work at something that changed your life is a great thing."