HESTER: The LSU job isn’t just a ‘job’

By Jacob Hester

The LSU job isn’t just another job in college football. It’s not a rebuild, and it’s definitely not a stepping stone. It’s different.

This place, this program, it’s alive. You can feel it when you drive down Nicholson and see Tiger Stadium rising through the oaks. You can feel it when somebody in Shreveport, Ponchatoula or New Iberia stops you at a gas station and asks, “How are we gonna be this year?”

That’s not small talk. That’s Louisiana talking. That’s LSU.

This job isn’t only about X’s and O’s. It’s about people. It’s about understanding what this place means, not just to Baton Rouge, but to an entire state that bleeds purple and gold.

You’re not just coaching a team. You’re leading Louisiana, from top to bottom and everywhere in between.

What the Job Actually Is

At LSU, you don’t just coach football. You lead a culture. You carry a state’s pride. You become the face of something bigger than any playbook can capture.

You inherit a legacy. Saban. Miles. Orgeron. Three very different men who all reached the same destination: a national championship.

That’s the standard. That’s the expectation.

At LSU, they don’t celebrate being competitive. You either win it all, or you’re chasing someone who did.

What It Takes to Make It Here

To make it at LSU, you have to understand Louisiana. Not visit it. Not read about it. Understand it and fully embrace it.

You have to know what it means to come from a small town where Friday nights are sacred, where kids grow up wearing No. 7 and No. 18, where every family has a Tiger Stadium story.

If you don’t get that, you’ll never get this job right.

This job demands more than recruiting and play-calling. It demands connection, passion and authenticity.

You have to recruit Louisiana like your life depends on it. You have to walk into a living room in Lafayette or Ruston and make a family believe that staying home
means something.

You have to build a culture that’s tougher than the schedule, more resilient than the noise and more connected than any NIL deal ever will be.

And you have to be the same person every single day, when you win by thirty and when you lose by three.

Because this state can smell fake from a mile away.

But if you’re real, if you love this place the way it deserves to be loved, Louisiana will ride for you forever.

What Makes LSU Different

You can’t explain LSU. You have to feel it.

It’s Saturday night in Tiger Stadium, the lights, the noise, the kind of energy that shakes your chest.

It’s gumbo at the tailgate, the Golden Band playing “Neck” and a hundred thousand people who believe they can change the outcome of a game just by yelling loud enough.

This isn’t corporate football. This isn’t cookie-cutter college ball. This is raw, emotional, unapologetic passion.

And if you respect it, this place will give you everything.

But if you treat it like just another job, it’ll eat you alive and expose you before you can even learn to spell lagniappe.

When LSU is right, when the state is behind it, there’s nothing else like it.

What LSU Needs Now

LSU doesn’t need a salesman, a polished politician, or a headline hire. It doesn’t need the home-run resume, either.

It needs someone who understands the soul of this place. Someone who’s willing to fight for every inch, every recruit, every Saturday night.

A coach whose priorities are family, LSU football and then rinse and repeat — think Jay Johnson, but on a gridiron.

It needs a leader who wants to be part of Louisiana, not above it.

Someone who wants to understand its culture and embrace the entire state with an authentic energy that can’t be manufactured.

Because when LSU is connected, when the locker room, the staff, the fans, and the state are all pulling together, there isn’t a program in America that can touch it.

That’s what this job is supposed to be. That’s what it can be again.

The Truth

The LSU job will test you. It’ll stretch you. It’ll break you down.

But if you do it right, if you pour yourself into it, if you love it, if you embrace the noise and the pressure and the pride, it’ll give you something no other job can.

Because at LSU, you don’t just coach a team. You become part of something that lives forever.

This is a place where football isn’t a sport. It’s an identity. It’s family. It’s faith.
It’s Saturday night under the lights with a hundred thousand people who believe in the same thing.

This is LSU. And here, good enough has never been good enough.

It’s not a rebuild. It’s not a pit stop. It’s a calling and not everyone is built for it.

But there’s somebody who is. And the challenge for the LSU committee is to find that person, someone mean, tough and unafraid to carry the weight of an entire state.

Geaux tigers and forever LSU.