Interview: Attorney general wants to work around legal issues to get Louisiana high school football started

An apostrophe and the letter “t” can provide a 180-degree change of meaning, especially when it relates to the great debate of starting the high school football season in Louisiana.

“I don’t believe in can’t,” Louisiana attorney general Jeff Landry said Monday night. “I believe in can.

“I do think if the LHSAA and the superintendents association and BESE, if we got all the lawyers in the room, we could find a way to put those boys on the field.”

Landry penned a letter to LHSAA executive director Eddie Bonine earlier Monday calling for the football season to begin. Week 1 of the season, which would have been this week, has been delayed until Oct. 8 at the earliest while the state remains in Phase Two of its coronavirus reopening plan.

“I thought it was important to explain to the LHSAA that there are ways we can work around it and get these boys playing football on Friday night,” Landry said.

Landry played high school football in the late 1980s at St. Martinville Senior High under legendary coach Carroll Delahoussaye.

“Football really is what America’s about,” Landry said. “You assume a risk when you step on the field, you learn to play within the rules, you don’t move the goalposts, you’ve got referees that make sure you stay within those rules, and it’s two great teams competing.

“When you’re on the football field or on the practice field, what your coaches teach you is you can do anything and that can’t is not in the vocabulary. We have politicized everything in this country. When you ask politicians to show that can’t is not in their vocabulary, they refuse to do it.”

While the LHSAA is poised to begin volleyball matches this week with only 25 student-athletes, coaches and staff in the facility, the biggest issue to re-starting football reportedly is Act 9, which limits liability related to COVID-19 unless it can be proven that the defendant failed to substantially comply with procedures related to the coronavirus.

“What we’ve been hearing from a number of people,” Landry said, “is that one of the impediments from allowing these young men to play on the field is that there’s some aura of legality around it, that it’s going to create some kind of boutique business for trial lawyers. That’s just not the case. We have the ability to fix those things if everyone wants to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

“We can certainly create waivers, depending on how you want to structure the game of football,” Landry added.

The delay is clearly frustrating to Landry.

“All summer long,” he said, “(student-athletes) were told if you do this, you stay home, we lock down, we social distance, you’re going to be able to play football.

“I really have gotten to the point where I’m fed up with it.”

Landry is offering the services of his office to get things started again.

“We’ve got an army of lawyers at the Attorney General’s office,” he said. “We’ve got a whole civil division that pores through state law, and we’re willing to sit down with anyone – whether it be the legislature, the LHSAA, BESE, the superintendents association, the school boards – to work through what they believe to be a legal impediment for getting kids back on the field.

Landry’s greatest disappointment comes for the senior players.

“They’ve worked four years to play this game and for the better part of their lives, and we’re going to disappoint them,” he said. “Why? Because of some lawyers, some potential lawsuits? It boggles my mind.

“It would be one thing if no one was playing football. Why is Louisiana any different?”

In a state that has had nearly 150,000 people test positive for COVID-19, including Landry, and has most recently taken the blow of a Category 4 storm in Hurricane Laura, things can only get better.

“Let’s hope at the end of the rainbow, there’s a football,” Landry said.