LSU football is a mess.

Ed Orgeron’s first full season in his “dream job” is not going as he, nor the hundreds of thousand LSU faithful, had hoped.

The Bayou Bengals are 3-2, and that is unacceptable.

LSU’s schedule has been quite meek.

BYU, whom LSU beat 27-0 in the first game, is a dumpster fire. The Cougars had trouble beating lower level Portland State in its first game and has been routed every time out since, by LSU, Utah, Wisconsin and Utah State in that order.

Chattanooga is a lower level team LSU beat 45-10 in game two.

Mississippi State stomped LSU 37-7 in Starkville in week three. The Bulldogs have proven they were a paper tiger by getting waxed 31-3 by Georgia and 49-10 by Auburn their last two games.

LSU had all kind of trouble with Syracuse before winning 35-26. The same Syracuse which lost at home to Middle Tennessee. I’m sorry, but an ACC team cannot, must not lose at home to one from Conference USA.

Then came Troy last Saturday.

Troy, a Sun Belt team. Troy, a school whose home city in southeast Alabama is only a few thousand people larger than the capacity of LSU’s Pete Maravich Assembly Center, which seats 13,000.

Troy, a team which has beaten Missouri and Oklahoma State in the past, but both of those games were at home on a weeknight, where the Trojans were getting rare national exposure against a power conference team.

This was a Saturday night in Baton Rouge. Tiger Stadium. Death Valley. The stadium LSU brags about being the toughest venue for a visiting team to play in all of college football.

Troy came into Tiger Stadium last Saturday and acted like it owned the place.

The final score, 24-21, was misleading. LSU needed two late touchdowns to make the score look good. The Trojans led 17-0 and 24-7.

That’s an ass-kicking. A serious ass-kicking.

Hiring Ed Orgeron may or may not be a mistake. I’m hoping against hope he will pull LSU out of its morass.

LSU’s biggest problem isn’t Orgeron.

It’s the man who hired Orgeron.

That means YOU, Joe Alleva.

LSU’s athletic director should not be occupying that position in the first place.

He royally screwed up during the investigation of Duke’s lacrosse team, throwing coach Mike Pressler under the bus by firing him, then refusing to hire him back when all the allegations of rape against players were found to be patently false.

The LSU Board of Supervisors and then-chancellor Sean O’Keefe fucked up big time by hiring Alleva, who has hired two bad men’s basketball coaches (Trent Johnson and Johnny Jones), a mediocre women’s basketball coach (Nikki Caldwell-Fargas) and now a football coach (Orgeron) who appears to be well over his head in the SEC.

Alleva had a chance to land a big fish when he fired Les Miles four games into 2016. He had a two month head start on anyone else. When the only person he really coveted for the job, Houston coach Tom Herman, chose Texas over LSU, Alleva waved the white flag.

Nanoseconds after Herman announced he was heading to Austin, Alleva stripped the “interim” off of Orgeron’s title.

Orgeron took a hometown discount ($3.5 million per year) to be LSU’s head coach in order to pay his coordinators, Dave Aranda (defense) and Matt Canada (offense), at least $1.5 million per year each. They are by far the highest paid pair of coordinators in the country.

Alleva still owes Miles a hefty buyout, which will not be completely paid off until 2023.

Many LSU fans and media who cover the team were not enamored with Orgeron’s hire. After the losses to Mississippi State and Troy, they were furious, calling for Alleva to fire the Larose native who was a teammate of former Saints quarterback Bobby Hebert’s on South Lafourche High School’s 1977 Louisiana Class AAAA (highest class) state championship team.

You want to fire Orgeron now? Better have $12 million.

That is not a typo.

TWELVE MILLION DOLLLARS to buy out a man who was 10-25 overall and 3-21 in the SEC in three seasons as Ole Miss’ head coach. TWELVE MILLION to buy out a man who will not leave LSU unless he is forced to.

Nice job, Joe Alleva.

Want to point the finger at Orgeron? Fine. But a bigger one has to be pointed at Alleva.