I don't recall Clouseau being that terrible, except that the faculty got their panties in a wad because he didn't have those 3 magic letters following his name.
He got a chance to return to his alma mater, he got a hefty a pay raise, and got a chance to lead a school ranked in the top-50 academically, versus LSU which is ranked 128.
He had almost no academic credentials at all for a college chancellor and it showed badly. He was a nice guy and a smart guy who never forgot a name, I liked him personally. But he did not understand how a university worked. He was hired politically because it was thought that he could pull big research dollars from the feds, but it didn't happen. He did raise a lot of alumni funds but he alienated much of the faculty by not managing the LSU campus properly and spent most of his time hob-nobbing with politicians, which is the LSU President's job. Lombardi does not suffer fools and he wasted little time in replacing O'Keefe once he was made President.
Lombardi played hardball, which is why he got fired from his last three jobs. He is effective professionally, but personally he rubbed a lot of politicians the wrong way.
This!!! As one who has done many college academic nights over the years I can say Emmert made our jobs very easy recruiting TOP NOTCH students to LSU from very good high schools in the DFW area. These days, other than LSU football games, they have almost nothing to offer (financially) compared to the Emmert days.
Keep in mind that the Emmert days didn't see 10 higher ed budget cuts in a 4-year period. He'd be walking into a far more difficult financial situation than when he left, which tells me we'd have to offer him a hell of a lot of money to take on that task.
Emmert was the best chancellor we ever had at LSU. But he is unlikely to step back. but if he comes back bye pm, bye alleva.
