Lonn Phillips Sullivan
Aug 19, 202010 min
Does former LSU Head Coach Les Miles get even more of a bad rap from Tiger fans in the wake of Coach Ed Orgeron's enigmatic rise and 2019 G.O.A.T Tigers juggernaut?
Or was he always this maligned?
I don't think so: I remember a time when LSU fans showered Les Miles with constant love and admiration, including myself...maybe we didn't know any better, but he was OUR guy.
We called him the "Mad Hatter", we loved Les's fearless persona and his steadfast loyalty to his players, while his charismatic recruiting elevated LSU from the embryonic halcyon days of Nick Saban into a 21st Century recruiting institution.
We especially loved the National Championship in 2007/08 or the undefeated run to the title game in 2011, supplying the Tigers a second BCS title (the first team to achieve this feat) and the second team to appear in three BCS National Championship games (after Oklahoma).
But was our collective love at that time because rugged, ragged offensive play was the only way we knew how to win?
Now that we've tried 2019's Ferrari, we're never geauxing back to the '94 Honda Civic...
Despite the slow move to change, does Les Miles deserve such swift retribution?
As if we've ignored the glory of his tenure due to the epic machinery of the 2019 team (Miles' 2007 team tossed 4 touchdown passes in a National Championship Game victory), there's been an in-depth destruction of the Miles era....as if he were LSU's phantom menace, Baton Rouge's Caligula.
For the longest time, LSU fans didn't shy away from criticizing the Miles era, in fact there was a big schism between the fan base during 2015 and 2016 when his job was slipping off a cliff: many wanted Les to stay, yet there grew a rising faction of influential fans, alums and boosters campaigning for his ouster.
Many were disgusted by our obvious lack of offensive progress: no matter how many different coordinators he hired or fired, Les couldn't change the offense...more than anything, it was his growing ineptitude against Alabama which made him a marked man.
A streak of 6 years in which Alabama beat LSU was kickstarted in the most humiliating fashion: the worst defeat in program history, a 21-0 shutout to Bama in the 2012 title game. Following a 2011 season where the Tigers stood as the greatest team in college football wire to wire, sweeping the awards with their massive, highly skilled squad in all phases of the game, this was beyond a disappointing result...for Louisiana, it felt as if the entire state was swallowed whole by Nick Saban.
It was a defeat Les Miles or the fans would never get over...even until this day no result (from any of the sports teams I support) has been more humiliating and we were all reminded of that January 2012 night every time a post-2012 Miles-led team went against the Tide.
Like a spectre in the night or a boogeyman under the bed, Miles' fear of losing to Saban continuously plagued his staff and players post-2012, these teams becoming so fearful of defeat that the Mad Hatter stopped rolling the dice whatsoever...desperation and special teams-dominated victories were our only blueprint for success.
Our offense went from conservative to pathetically predictable in its extreme run-based formula and after 2012, these LSU-Bama showdowns transformed from brutal back-and-forth SEC West contests into slow motion train crashes of the utmost frustration.
Even until his final season, the 2012 BCS title game's failure hung around him like a reptilian stench, fairly or unfairly and he knew it, clouding his judgement until he clearly lost the plot altogether (see: 2016 Auburn ending)...although the real reason the 2012 BCS Championship Game defeat continued to haunt the next 7 years of Tigers football??
While Miles may have hired and fired coordinators, he never changed his offensive philosophy or pursued a revolutionary offensive mind bold enough to flip LSU's struggling offensive script. A damning statistic, from the 2012 title game victory on to the 7th and final consecutive defeat in 2018, LSU were outscored 193 to 73 vs Alabama and surrendered 3 cruel shutouts, scoring no more than 17 points in any contest.
Miles may have been great at recruiting top offensive talent at the skill positions, however his bothersome inability to capture a top quarterback outside of Zach Mettenberger became another nail in the Miles legacy coffin, hammered home by Orgeron's stable of past (Burrow), current (Brennan, Finley, Johnson) and future quarterback talent (Nussmeier, Howard, Holnstein, possibly Arch Manning???).
Despite Miles recruiting Brennan, the Not-So-Slim Reaper has developed into a far more complete quarterback under Orgeron / Ensminger than he would have if Miles were still coaching in Baton Rouge, especially considering Les believed Ensminger, a former LSU quarterback was better suited as a Tight Ends Coach rather than an Offensive Coordinator / QBs Coach.
Miles may have helped recruit Ja'Marr Chase, however the former Head Coach wanted Chase to "play cornerback"; this insult initially made Ja'Marr switch from staying home to McElwain's Florida. Miles' ridiculously cavalier interpretations of Ja'Marr's receiving talents nearly took away one of LSU's greatest all-time receivers and gave him to an eternal rival....Miles could've inadvertently prevented a National Championship 3 years in the future without even being the Head Coach at LSU...how many times did this occur on the recruiting trail?
Ja'Marr Chase would've been a Gator because of Les Miles, a tragedy only narrowly prevented by both McElwain losing his job and Orgeron taking over as head coach. Orgeron told Chase "no way in hell will you play defense".
Also.... would Les have had the gumption to even chase Joe Burrow's signature?? Would his negligence on offense have driven Burrow to Cincy?
Would Miles have hired former Ohio State Safeties Coach Bill Busch and most importantly, would he have listened to Busch when the former Buckeye and Utah State Aggie coach said "if we can get Joe Burrow, we're going to the College Football Playoff"....would Les consider any opinion other than his own?
More than anything else on the field, it was Les's stubborn dismissal of any football-related Xs & Os after 1976, his constant flirtations with the Michigan job, the obvious egotism, the cutting of Tyrann Mathieu and Miles' relentless quest for complete control which changed my views of the "Mad Hatter".
The aftermath of the 2012 BCS National Championship loss to Alabama brought pain, sorrow and frustration in ways LSU fans have only just started recovering from: returning Heisman candidate Tyrann Mathieu (closest defender to the pose since Charles Woodson) was exiled out of LSU in one of the most gut-wrenching moments in our recent history.
Les Miles used Mathieu as a scapegoat to explain why his players were perennially in trouble with the law...after all, this is a coach who covered up every positive Mathieu drug test during the 2011 season, but with the 2011 campaign finished, Miles' loyalty to Mathieu had reached its limit.
Sure, Tyrann made the wrong choices and suffered the consequences, but had Miles disciplined his players in the first place, Mathieu would've finished his college career the right way, I'm certain....instead, Miles never had control over his football team, nor did he care to instill discipline.
He allowed others to become bigger than the team, while scapegoats (for both on and off the field issues) Mathieu, Jarrett Lee, Russell Shepard, T-Bob Hebert became the fish to fry for unjustifiable reasons which struck a nerve across the fan-base that still reverberates years later.
Make no mistake, the coach's public destruction of Mathieu's reputation and collegiate career changed how we all saw Les Miles...whether we realized it or not.
In the years after the title loss, Miles' Tigers were still the second best recruiters in college, but our team began suffering defeats in games we had no business losing...under Miles we started losing 3+ games a season, dropping 5 in 2014.
He was supposed to be gone in 2015, but thanks to a nostalgic and incredibly ugly win over A&M, Alleva famously announced (during the 4th quarter of the A&M victory) that Les Miles would be back for 2016.
Now on a fiery hot seat, Les tried to get back his "no pressure job" by polishing his staff with big-time names, and in the process, Les built the foundation of the current LSU juggernaut...mostly by accident.
In between the 2015 and 2016 seasons, Miles pulled in Ed Orgeron and defensive coordinator Dave Aranda, now the 2019 Coach of the Year and highest paid assistant coach respectively (later leave to become head coach of Baylor).
Following next in 2010, he'd hired former LSU quarterback Steve Ensminger to better our offense, but couldn't figure out how best to utilize the old school offensive mind, switching his title after every season and opting for OCs' like the fantastic but extremely temporary Gary Crowton, the woeful Greg Strudrawa and the interminable Cam Cameron...
...but finally in 2016, no coordinator could shield Les from what was to come: Miles was exposed as an under-par coach when he bungled a game vs Auburn due to the worst clock management of all time (setting our 2016 season up for failure);
Immediately following the Auburn loss, LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva (who he'd now been steadily feuding / plotting with for years), the alumni, the boosters and the fans had seen enough.
The Mad Hatter could be a phenomenal coach most of the time and could certainly recruit, the crazy bata could even be a genius at times...but he rode luck and the roll of the dice for far too long and LSU lost close game after close game due to his inability to progress our offense.
Despite taking the Tigers to a pair of national titles (winning one), Coach Les Miles wore out his welcome at LSU; not merely from the "stone age offense" he deployed (as Joe Burrow dubbed it) or the near lack of institutional control, the Mad Hatter thought he was bigger than LSU.
Although he had some big success in Baton Rouge, Les only took LSU to three total BCS games in 11 years (2005-2016), winning a Sugar Bowl in 2006 with a team completely made up of Saban recruits either side of the title game victory and defeat, all while possessing a bevy of talent unmatched outside of Alabama during an 11 year span in which Saban racked up 4 titles at Bama, Dabo won one and narrowly lost another, Auburn scored one in 2010 and lost another in 2013...LSU equaling Auburn or Clemson isn't good enough.
Indeed, after he shocked the world when he snatched Ryan Perriloux out from under Texas's Mack Brown (before refusing to play the kid for a few tumultuous seasons) Les continued a hobby of wasting big-name weapons on offense like Russell Shepard (who should've played quarterback), Jordan Jefferson (who shouldn't have played quarterback), Wide Receivers Malachi Dupre, Jarvis Landry, OBJ and D.J Chark, Leonard Fournette and many many more.
We didn't have enough creativity on offense to out-scheme Nick Saban or Kirby Smart whatsoever...in fact during the last years of the Miles era (until the first two years of Coach O's tenure), LSU were fading as a national powerhouse, burying themselves in an inescapable SEC West quagmire.
Coach Miles believed he put LSU on the map and didn't need the Tigers job to be a success...we were really just a stop on Les's route...after all, he'd inherited the 2007 title-winning team from the work of Nick Saban in the first place...
As a symbol of LSU's history, Head Coach Les Miles is present, clear and definitive...this wasn't long ago at all when he was at the helm and I'm hoping he didn't stain our program more than 4 straight losses to Alabama or the bizarre grass-eating episode.
I still believe Les Miles is a good guy, especially in the way he looked after Justin Jefferson as a young man and his older brother Jordan as one of his own players...and regardless of his suspension, Tyrann Mathieu will never say a bad word about Les and would probably be pissed at me for writing this right now.
For all the ineptitude, lost opportunities, horrific defeats, Miles established highs we'd never experienced at LSU...in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Les didn't run either.
By the time he was attempting to take a time out against Auburn in fall 2016, it was just time for a changing of the guard...and Joe Alleva as well as F. King Alexander were both out the door over the following years, too.
In the end, Miles and Alleva both had to go...they were complicit in covering up player wrongdoings (Derrius Guice specifically), they felt entitled to their positions after a decade in charge and worst of all, they became complacent....even lazy.
With recent news swirling about a double rape accusation against former LSU running back Derrius Guice (our 5th placed all-time leading rusher who holds the single-game rushing mark), both allegations stemmed from Guice's freshman year, 2015 into early 2016, a time when Head Coach Les Miles and Athletic Director Joe Alleva ran the show, LSU President F. King Alexander in the picture as well.
Though their involvement is educated speculation at this juncture....if you believe these women were victims of Guice's violence, then you also believe there had to be a cover-up to keep this situation silent for nearly 5 years, a cover-up which would've been administered by the top brass of LSU athletics circa 2015/16...buried forever and turned into a classic "he said she said" / "nothing to see here, folks" episode....yet we don't have all the information yet.
As I began writing about Les's legacy last night, only wondering whether he deserved the bad rap he's received over the last few years for his footballing ineptitude, this Guice story exploded all over the news and couldn't be ignored due to the timeline.
Unless the reports from the victim to an unidentified LSU nurse and single member of the coaching staff was buried before administrators were aware (which is unlikely), the setting of these events fixes Coach Miles as a major participant and decision-maker concerning the sexual assault allegations against Guice, right alongside awful former Athletic Director Joseph Alleva and former President F. King Alexander.
With each new update to the story, it's looking like the final indictment on the Miles-era is nigh at hand...this time coming from a much larger pool of judgement than merely LSU fans.
BY LONN PHILLIPS SULLIVAN
GEAUX TIGERS
COPYRIGHT 2020 UNINTERRUPTED WRITINGS INC LLC
SHOUTOUTS: SUSAN C. GROSS, HAROLD!!!!, MISS PEGGY, AD, AG SILVER (MYLES BRENNAN'S TWIN), SARAH, JOSEPH RUTKOWSKE, TONY TWO BETS, JORDY GEAUXIN AFTER DICKY V, GLEN WEST, NURSEKORT, MARTIN MOORE, DORIAN, ALLISON VALENTINE, MICHAEL LEBLANC, DIRTY SOUTH, BRUCE FELDMAN FOR HIS KINDNESS & COACH ED ORGERON