LSU Board Of Stupid-Visors Approves The 'Brian Kelly Family Room' Days After He Filed For Divorce
BATON ROUGE - This is all you need to know about the LSU Board of Supervisors.
One day after LSU football coach Brian Kelly filed for divorce from his wife Francisca "Paqui" Kelly, the Board approved the naming of a room in the LSU Football Operations Building after the couple.
"We have a request to name two rooms," a spokesman said to the Board on Friday. "The first is the Kelly Family Room to honor coach Brian Kelly and his wife Paqui in recognition of their generous contributions to the athletic department."
Last October, Kelly and his wife donated $1 million to the Tiger Athletic Foundation fund raising arm toward the reconstruction of a new athletic training and recovery room in the football building.
LSU Board Of Supervisors Did Not Show Great Timing
Did anybody on or with the Board think maybe it might be a good idea to put the "Kelly Family Room" vote off until next month days after divorce papers were filed? Does anyone on the Board follow the news? It was in many places, with the exception of the Baton Rouge newspaper.
LSU Board of Supervisors members listen to arguments to keep the name of "Dale Brown Court" as it is and to change it to "Dale Brown-Sue Gunter Court," which it later approved on Friday.
On Thursday, news broke from Tiger Rag Magazine in Baton Rouge that Kelly filed for divorce from his wife of 27 years last Monday in East Baton Rouge Parish. The couple "will physically separate on February 9, 2023 and live separately and apart without reconciliation," the divorce papers state. A local TV station also reported on this.
BRIAN KELLY'S DIVORCE PAPERS HAVE HIM KEEPING $3 MILLION HOME NEAR LSU
The papers also get very specific about Kelly remaining in their palatial home on the LSU lakes and about the money, of which Kelly makes a lot. He makes $10 million a year as LSU's football coach since December of 2021. The papers include a restraining order against the defendant, Mrs. Kelly, to protect Brian Kelly's and/or the couple's assets.
Have Brian Kelly And His Wife Reconciled?
Since the news broke, Kelly's three children and his attorneys at Downs, Saffiotti & Boudreaux in Baton Rouge have said Kelly is rescinding his divorce filing as the couple has reconciled. That was quick. OutKick contacted the firm Friday, and as of late Friday afternoon, though, there is no documentation of a reconciliation yet.
And news of the divorce filing is not "fake" as the above tweet by Kelly's son Patrick says. The Downs, Saffiotti & Boudreaux firm confirmed the divorce filing and sent copies of it to various media entities. The divorce filing appears here, courtesy of WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge.
Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Kelly are reconciled or are in the process of doing so. Lots of couples consider divorce, but end up not doing so and are happy they did not. So, good luck to both.
LSU Basically Lost $1 Million Recently
Now, the $1 million donated by the Kelly family is separate of the $1 million salary overpayment Kelly received recently from LSU that he is in the process of paying back. An outside firm discovered it through an audit of LSU's business affairs, since apparently LSU cannot keep track of its own money. And, oh, LSU just got another $50 million from the Southeastern Conference office's distribution for 2022 on Thursday. Try to keep that accounted for, LSU.
How do you not account for a million dollars, by the way? Well, welcome to LSU - aka "Kardashians on the Bayou."
LSU basketball coach Dale Brown with his 1985-86 team that reached the Final Four. (Focus on Sport photo via Getty Images)
This is a place where they name a court after a coach, then change it a year later. LSU paid $11,500 to install "Dale Brown Court" in writing on the floor of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in January of 2022. Now, it plans to pay that much or more to change the name to "Dale Brown-Sue Gunter Court" in the near future after the Board of Supervisors approved that on Friday.
Brown was a very successful men's basketball coach at LSU. Gunter was a very successful women's basketball coach, but not as successful as Brown at LSU. A Gunter statue has also been in the Assembly Center since 2006 - a year after she died. Both names on the court dilutes each coach's accomplishments. Bad idea. A street or practice facility should be named after her instead.
POLITICAL BASKETBALL: DALE BROWN COURT'S MYSTERIOUS NAME CHANGE
This after sinister back room dealings by LSU president William Tate, Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards and countless others in LSU's athletic department to push the Gunter addition through. Minus the murders, LSU is "Mafia on the Bayou."
All in a day. There's no place like LSU.
"I never could have foreseen the ugly, unfortunate mess that brought me here," Pulitzer prize winning journalist and author Jeffrey Marx, a friend of Dale Brown's, said to the Board and President William Tate Friday. He had been trying to stop the name change of Dale Brown Court.
"A private pressure campaign, the direct participation of President Tate and Governor John Bel Edwards and other power brokers, countless additional behind-the-scenes conversations all has happened without including the public," Marx said.
Marx asked to have his comments put in the public record of the meeting, which is common at such meetings. But LSU attorney Winston DeCuir Jr. said no. "There's a process," he insisted.
I nearly laughed out loud. Liars do not like certain things in the public record. LSU's Board, which I have covered since 1983, frequently doesn't bother itself with any process. It basically makes it up as it goes. The original 12-3 vote for the Dale Brown Court was slipped onto the agenda without many knowing in 2021. So was the Gunter vote this time, which won 6-2 in committee. They decided not to do a full vote this time, and it passed with a general "Yay." How either move reached the agenda is not the story, though some mistakenly went that way. The votes were the story.
And do not be surprised if a new governor and his newly appointed board blocks adding Gunter within a year, or changes the court name back to Brown only. If it can happen twice, it can happen three times at LSU.
The LSU Board uses and doesn't use "process" whenever it suits the situation. You should know that, Winston. But I requested a copy of the comments by Marx, and will keep them as part of my permanent LSU records for future use, thank you very much.
LSU At Times Can Be Lying State University
"We're about truth. We're about ethics," Tate droned on later while discussing other matters before the Board.
Uh, no, Mr. Tate, you're not. At least, not all the time.
I used to think stuff like this went on at other schools. But other than, say, Auburn, it really doesn't.
Several people who have worked at LSU's athletic department after working at other athletic departments or conferences and then moved on have told me over the years, there is no place like LSU. And not in a good way.
"It's exhausting," said one LSU beat writer as he exited. And he had only been on the beat five years.
"How so? The travel, the length of the seasons?" I asked. "No," he said. "It's the lies. It's exhausting trying to find out who is telling the truth."
This doesn't happen all the time, but enough. And in this most recent episode, LSU proved to clearly be Lying State University just to rename a freakin' basketball court.
Only at LSU.