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LSU completes its mission
The lights were out in the basement at 1224 North Brooks at 20:10 last night. The CPAP mask was on, and I was going to try to get as much sleep as possible.
I woke up at 00:48, went back to bed, then was up for good at 03:50.
I waited a few minutes before venturing to The Advocate website.
The header screamed “THIS IS FOR ALL OF US”.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out LSU defeated Clemson to become the 2019 Division I Football Bowl Subdivision national champion.
The Bayou Bengals fell behind the Tigers from South Carolina 17-7 early in the second quarter, the first time LSU has trailed by more than seven points since losing 29-0 to Alabama in November 2018.
I felt 95 percent sure LSU would not lead wire-to-wire, as it did against Oklahoma in the Peach Bowl and Georgia in the SEC championship game. I figured Dabo’s boys would build a two-score lead at some point, which it did.
By halftime, the tenor of the game changed 180 degrees.
LSU scored three touchdowns to turn that 17-7 deficit into a 28-17 lead.
Clemson scored early in the third quarter and added the conversion to make it 28-25, but Trevor Lawrence and his team did not score again.
Final: LSU 42, Clemson 25. The Bayou Bengals joined the 2018 Clemson Tigers as the only college football teams to finish 15-0 since 1900. The others to win 15 (or 16) without a loss played in the 1890s, before the NCAA was founded.
Ed Orgeron proclaimed his 2019 team the “best ever”.
He has many great points.
LSU, which was ranked #6 in the Associated Press preseason poll, defeated the teams ranked #1 (Clemson), #2 (Alabama), #3 (Georgia) and #4 (Oklahoma) in that poll. That never happened until 2019.
LSU defeated seven top-10 teams: the four aforementioned teams, plus Texas, Florida and Auburn.
Joe Burrow had a season for the ages, throwing 60 touchdown passes (yes, he did so in 15 games, but four TD passes per game is incredible), finishing with 467 yards and five TDs against Clemson.
Burrow is headed to Cincinnati barring something cataclysmic. The Bengals would be asinine not to pick him first overall in the upcoming NFL draft.
LSU fans got a dose of bad news late this afternoon when it was announced Joe Brady, the 31-year old wunderkind who came to Baton Rouge and installed the high-powered passing attack Bayou Bengal fans could only have dreamed about prior 2019, would be going back to the NFL as offensive coordinator for Matt Rhule and the Panthers.
The worry is without Brady, Orgeron and Steve Ensminger will resort to the prehistoric offense which hastened Les Miles’ demise. I don’t think it will happen, but Orgeron needs to move swiftly and decisively to fill this hole.
Coaching turnover is an inevitable part of football. However, Brady is going to the NFL, not to another SEC school. The bad news is he’ll be facing the Saints twice a year.
Many fans would have been mighty disappointed had LSU lost last night, but many might not have been. The Bayou Bengals defeated Alabama two months ago to end an eight-game losing streak to the Crimson Tide, and Nick Saban was sitting next to Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit all night in a suit and tie, which meant he wasn’t on the sideline coaching Alabama.
With that in mind, I hope LSU fans who are 25 and under are grateful for the success the Bayou Bengals have enjoyed since 2000.
LSU’s WORST record since 2000 is 8-5, which occurred in 2008, one year after LSU defeated Ohio State for the BCS national championship.
I’m old enough to remember LSU suffering through six consecutive losing seasons from 1989-94. Two words: CURLEY HALLMAN.
Hallman, who only got the LSU job because Brett Favre was his quarterback at Southern Miss–gifted to him by Jim Carmody–and Joe Dean was too freaking cheap to hire anyone better. Dean got bamboozled by Hallman’s record as a drill sergeant and he was an assistant on national championship teams at Alabama (1973) and Clemson (1981).
Too bad Hallman put together a mostly incompetent staff, save for Phil Bennett. He didn’t recruit all that poorly, because Gerry DiNardo came in and took LSU to three consecutive low-level bowl games from 1995-97.
I’ll never forget just how excited LSU fans were over a 6-4-1 regular season in 1995 which sent the Bayou Bengals to the Independence Bowl to face Michigan State When LSU defeated Nick Saban’s Spartans 45-26, LSU fans reacted like they were well on their way to a national championship.
Yes, there was a national championship coach in the house in Shreveport on 29 December. Only he was wearing green, not purple.
LSU went 10-2 in 1996 and won the Peach Bowl. It was one of the worst 10-2 teams I’ve seen. The Bayou Bengals played a pillow soft schedule, and in the two biggest games, they were routed 56-13 by eventual national champion Florida and 26-0 by Alabama when Shaun Alexander rushed for 291 yards.
Then came the most overrated win in LSU athletic history, the 1997 game vs. then-No. 1 Florida, which it promptly pissed away a week later by losing to Ole Miss.
With mostly his own players, DiNardo had two horrible years in 1998 and ’99, which was a blessing in disguise, because it forced LSU to open its wallets to pay for a quality coach. That quality coach was Nick Saban, a choice which angered many fans who considered him a “Yankee” from Michigan State.
Saban went 48-16 in five seasons in Baton Rouge. Les Miles followed and went 114-34 over the next 11-plus campaigns, combining for 25 more wins than Charles McClendon had in 18 seasons (137-59-7).
It wasn’t all wine and roses for Orgeron, either. LSU fans were up in arms after losses to Alabama and Florida in November 2016, and many hoped Tom Herman would leave Houston to come to Baton Rouge. When it was announced Orgeron would get the job full time two days after LSU defeated Texas A&M to close the 2016 regular season, a collective groan could be heard from Shreveport to Port Sulphur, from Lake Providence to Cameron, and many points in between.
Orgeron’s seat heated up again when LSU lost at home to Troy in 2017, and again when Alabama came to Baton Rouge in 2018 and laid the 29-0 beatdown on the Bayou Bengals.
Today, no coach in college athletics is more beloved by his or her fan base than Ed Orgeron. More so than Nick Saban, Coach K, Bill Self, Geno Auriemma, and Dabo.
Part of me wishes I were in Louisiana to experience the season. The other part says I’m better off from a distance. Regardless, it’s history. Time to let the pros take it from here.
LSU=lousy football
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.
A lot since I last blogged…
There has been a lot of craziness since the last time I posted. I should have posted something Sunday or Monday with all that went on.
The trip home from Kansas City Saturday was uneventful. It was a good two days over there, a good break from the humdrum of Russell, Hays, Norton and other towns.
Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez died in the wee hours of Sunday morning in a boating accident, along with two others. It was reported the operator of the boat, which was licensed to Fernandez, was traveling at high speed, much faster than was safe for that time of night. It crashed into a jetty, throwing the occupants around like rag dolls, and killing all three by blunt force trauma.
Arnold Palmer died Sunday evening. It was announced during the Bears-Cowboys game on NBC. Palmer, who was 87, was one of the most popular golfers who ever lived, and one of America’s most iconic athletes, period. His exploits on the course would be surpassed by Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and others, but nobody will ever come close to matching the popularity Arnie enjoyed during his heyday, and well after his retirement. In fact, he had recently been appearing in ads for the blood thinning medication Xarelto with NASCAR driver Brian Vickers and comedian Kevin Nealon, the longtime Saturday Night Live actor. I’ll always remember Palmer in the Pennzoil commercials of the 1980s.
The Arizona Cardinals looked mighty pathetic in Buffalo. The Bills won 33-18, and frankly, it was never that close. Buffalo gashed the Cardinals for over 200 yards rushing, and Carson Palmer looked like he had never seen an NFL defense. Palmer threw four interceptions in the fourth quarter. Let that sink in: four picks in one period. Brutal. I’ve seen this so often from the Cardinals in over three decades of following the NFL, but most of the time, I didn’t expect them to win. Now that the Cardinals are expected to win many of these games, it makes it much more frustrating.
The Cardinals play the Rams Sunday in Glendale. Yes, Arizona has won four of the last five meetings, but the one was last year in Arizona, when the Rams won 24-22, thanks in large part to Todd Gurley. If Tyrod Taylor and LeSean McCoy can have that much success on the ground vs. Arizona, what will Gurley do? Oh boy.
The most important sports news of Sunday, at least to me, came out of my native state.
LSU, my alma mater, fired football coach Les Miles Sunday, 24 hours after the Bayou Bengals lost 18-13 at Auburn. LSU appeared to win the game when Danny Etling hit D.J. Chark along the sideline in the end zone on the last play of the game. I didn’t think LSU got the snap off before time ran out, and indeed, the officials concurred after reviewing it.
The next afternoon, I read on The Advocate website LSU was “considering” major changes to the football program. Then came a rumor Miles and offensive coordinator Cam Cameron were going to be fired. Then it was confirmed.
Miles was very close to being fired last November when LSU lost three consecutive games to Alabama, Arkansas and Ole Miss following a 7-0 start. Miles’ job was saved only after LSU beat Texas A&M 19-7 in Baton Rouge in the regular season finale. The job appeared more secure after a 56-27 victory over Texas Tech in the Texas Bowl, but the 16-14 loss to Wisconsin at Green Bay in this year’s season opener had fans grumbling and only served to turn up the heat on Miles.
Miles was canned despite a 114-34 mark at LSU. He has the highest all-time win percentage in program history (.770), and his 114 wins rank him second only behind the 137 by “Cholly Mac”, Charles McClendon, who coached the Bayou Bengals from 1962-79. Miles won a national championship in 2007 despite triple overtime losses to Kentucky and Arkansas, and in 2011, LSU won its first 13 games against the nation’s most difficult schedule to reach the championship game, but were thoroughly embarrassed by Alabama in New Orleans. The Crimson Tide won 21-0 and held LSU to a meager 92 yards, fewest by any team in a championship game since 1998, the first year of the BCS.
LSU hasn’t won even an SEC West championship since 2012. It hasn’t finished any of the previous four seasons with fewer than three losses. I fear the Bayou Bengals may regress to the point where it falls behind Arkansas, Ole Miss and Texas A&M permanently.
Ed Orgeron, LSU’s defensive line coach, was named the interim coach. His first game is Saturday night vs. Missouri in Death Valley. Orgeron was head coach at Ole Miss in 2005, ’06 and ’07 and was a miserable failure, going 10-25 overall and 3-21 in SEC games. He also was arrested for DUI, and committed some recruiting violations, violations which are still casting a shadow over the program even though Orgeron has been gone from Oxford for nine years.
Orgeron was interim coach at USC in 2013 after Lane Kiffin was fired, and went 6-2 with the Trojans. Some felt he should have been given the job permanently, given his ties to Pete Carroll as an assistant on USC’s back-to-back AP national championships of 2003 and 2004, but the Trojans made the disastrous hire of Steve Sarkisian, who didn’t last two full seasons.
This is Orgeron’s dream job. He grew up in Cut Off, a small town in southern Lafourche Parish, and played at South Lafourche High, where the Trojans won the 1977 Class AAAA state championship (Louisiana’s highest classification at that time). One of Orgeron’s high school teammates was Bobby Hebert, who went on to play quarterback for the Saints and Falcons. Orgeron briefly attended LSU, but transferred to Nicholls State in Thibodaux and played football there.
Orgeron was hired in 2015 by Miles as defensive line coach. “Coach O” is known as a fantastic recruiter, and he was elevated by LSU athletic director Joe Alleva to help keep recruits from wavering in their commitment to the Bayou Bengals.
If Orgeron helps LSU win its next eight games, he could very well stay on permanently. Alleva will only consider people with previous college head coaching experience, and even though Orgeron’s career record is 16-27, he qualifies.
Miles’ firing is the earliest in LSU’s history. Now what if a previous athletic director had the guts to pull the trigger on another LSU coach after a stupefying loss at Auburn? I’ll discuss in another post.
As for me, it’s volleyball in Hays for the second time in three days. Norton lost to TMP and Plainville Tuesday. Today is no easier, since the Bluejays play three larger schools: Salina South, Hays and Abilene. I’m going back to Norton Monday, because it’s the last home matches this season, which means it’s senior night for Caitlyn. She’d never forgive me if I missed it.
This week is the first time I haven’t had an appointment with Crista since the week of July 18. I had been going weekly since the last week of July, but she wanted to try to go back to every two weeks, which was the schedule until the change. I was feeling a little bit anxious Tuesday in TMP’s fieldhouse before the matches. I was about to call her and leave a message saying it was a huge mistake to cancel. Lucky for me, I snapped out of it and didn’t need to call.
I can’t believe it will be October Saturday, but time flies sometimes.