How Louisiana legend Tommy Moffitt left LSU and came out happier than ever
Tommy Moffitt, a staffer in the Tigers' program for 23 years, was swept out during LSU's coaching change, but he's made the most of it.
theathletic.com
From May 2022, but shows his thoughts on being out of work.
Just as interesting is the detail it goes into on the coaching transition.
“I wanted to enjoy my last six or eight weeks there and do the very best job that I could do and really focus my energy on the players,” Moffitt said. “They are the ones who matter. The coaches, we all got paid out handsomely. We weren’t out there risking our lives every Saturday for this team. So I tried to be a good leader and talk to people. Because the players would come talk to me and say, ‘Coach, what is gonna happen?’ I would just try to be there for them, and I found a great deal of comfort and reward in that.”
The coaching rumors swirled constantly in those weeks, from Jimbo Fisher to James Franklin to Mel Tucker to Lincoln Riley. Very few had any expectation for it to be Kelly leaving the power he’d built up north at Notre Dame to try rebuilding an SEC program in the south.
That’s when things really got weird.
There were five weeks between Kelly’s hiring and LSU’s bowl game Jan. 4. For those five weeks, Kelly and his top lieutenants just observed. But Kelly didn’t speak to hardly anyone. Multiple sources call it one of the strangest transitions they’d ever experienced. Assistant coaches were expected to go on the road recruiting for a coach who wasn’t speaking to them. One assistant coach told The Athletic that Kelly told him on the phone they’d talk soon and never did. LSU had visitors in town for a recruiting weekend and asked none of the coaches to be there, one source said. Revered LSU cornerbacks coach Corey Raymond was expected to be a priority to retain, but Kelly had new safeties coach Kerry Cooks go see one of Raymond’s recruits instead. After two weeks of no word, Raymond left for a job at Florida. The majority of assistants stayed on through the bowl game with no clarity other than a general sense that they weren’t going to be retained.
When Miles was hired in 2005 after Saban left for the Miami Dolphins, he had a meeting with all the leftover staff members on a Sunday and asked, “Who wants to stay? You hang out here and we’ll talk.” There was none of that this time. The Orgeron hire had a different dynamic because he was interim coach for two months and had worked with the entire staff for two years. Moffitt recalls noticing only 10 men on the field for a special teams snap during a game against Missouri and calling it out. Orgeron went over to Moffitt on the sideline and said, “I don’t know if I’m going to get this job, but if I get another job, you’re gonna be the first person I hire.”
This time, Moffitt spoke to Kelly only once briefly at a function at Tiger Stadium. Then Kelly was off recruiting. Moffitt understood what was happening, so he focused his efforts on helping his staff members find other jobs.
Then, he was finally called to meet with Kelly.
“You seen the movie ‘The Green Mile’?” Moffitt said. “Yeah, that’s how it felt. Like I was going to the electric chair.”
Even the staff members in operations or player relations or working reception — the kind of staffers normally not let go in such transitions — worked through the bowl game, then were told by administrators they would not be retained and would be paid for another month.
The sense from the Kelly staff was that LSU had cultural issues and the program required a complete rebuild. It’s part of why sources said LSU and athletic director Scott Woodward didn’t look at head coaching candidates with connections to the Miles or Orgeron regimes. So aside from a few key employees, the LSU football program was going to be built back up from scratch. Kelly even delayed the start of spring practice to get his processes and systems in place.
