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Ever since that closetojumping crybaby jumped in about grammar yall all got riled up...this man threatened me with reactions Unlike that fool I fucks with UT based on the people I have met in rea

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10 minutes ago, Chad said:

Brady or Aranda.

 

Brady doesn't want to be in college.

Aranda would make some sense. And I'd be happy for him to leave Baylor. He's not very proven as an HC yet though so I'd be a little surprised.

Wonder if any Jimbo rumors start popping up.

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The Athletic - Inside Ed Orgeron’s fall from celebrated son of Louisiana to LSU coaching pariah

Spoiler

Five years ago, Ed Orgeron sped down I-12 at 6 a.m. with his head out the window of his black GMC truck blaring “Born on the Bayou” from Mandeville to Baton Rouge on the way to live out his dreams. Waiting for him outside the football operations building was athletic director Joe Alleva, preparing to offer him the LSU head coaching job. The kid from Larose, La., was going to become the most important public figure in his home state.

And somehow a lifetime has been lived within these five years, an LSU coaching tenure meandering from laughingstock to legend to statewide pariah. Few believed Orgeron should be LSU’s football coach. Then they thought he should hold the role for life. Now he’s been unceremoniously labeled a one-hit wonder and will soon be looking for a job.

LSU and Orgeron reached a separation agreement that will take effect after the season, sources tell The Athletic, confirming multiple reports. Orgeron is expected to get his full buyout, according to The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman. It comes less than two years after leading an undefeated national championship team in 2019 that some argued was the best in college football history. He followed that championship with a pair of up and down campaigns with two polar-opposite staffs, neither working to lift the Tigers. All of this included characteristic drama along the way.

The rise and fall of Orgeron can be defined by what happens when an already volatile man reaches the absolute peak of his profession, popularity and prestige right as he undergoes a public divorce through a pandemic while the world shifts around him. It’s about the difference between being able to learn from failure and being able to sustain that success.

Orgeron’s time at LSU wasn’t a repeat of his Ole Miss tenure. This wasn’t a downfall via chaotic behavior and driving assistants mad. It was a slow and steady whittling away of all the things that brought him and the program success. Add in a massive Title IX scandal in the university and the newly single Orgeron’s interactions with women bringing new distractions, and the changing off-field behavior coincided with declining on-field results.

“He lost track of who he was and what made him good from the national championship to now,” one source told The Athletic.

There were coordinator hires of coaches Orgeron admits to not fully interviewing and embarrassing interactions with fans. There were viral photos of him in bed with women. There were political comments that fractured the locker room and a poorly handled racial inequality protest. And there was a roster that lacked the leadership of LSU’s 2019 title team. All of this under a new athletic director who didn’t hire Orgeron and had no built-in loyalty to him.

There’s no one thing that brought Ed Orgeron down. If the championship was called a “perfect storm” that came together for greatness, so too was it a perfect storm that led to his demise.

“That doesn’t make him a bad coach,” one person close to the situation said. “It doesn’t make him a bad motivator. It doesn’t make him a bad recruiter. It doesn’t make him a bad person. He just lost track of who Coach O is a little bit and his sense of identity.”

When football became secondary

On the night LSU won the national championship in New Orleans, Orgeron went back to his hotel room around 2:30 a.m. with his wife, Kelly. They had nothing to eat, but somebody handed them some Popeyes chicken and the two finished off the box before falling asleep. By the time he woke up five hours later for a news conference, he was the man with the most capital in all of Louisiana.

Six weeks later, Orgeron filed for divorce.

In his 23 years married to Kelly, Orgeron generally kept a low social profile. His personality will always be larger than life, but he didn’t go out often and wasn’t known to socialize much. After battling alcoholism and a past involving arrests and restraining orders, Orgeron lived a more stable and private life for 23 years with “Miss Kelly.”

Then, at his most powerful — and his most wealthy — Orgeron was single again. He had just signed a six-year, $42 million extension and was a Louisiana hero. And he was going to enjoy it. “Something that had priority in his life that didn’t have a priority before was talking to (women),” one LSU source said. “That just became too high on the totem pole.”

To people and sources inside the program, there was no moral issue with Orgeron enjoying his life, but it was noticeable that football wasn’t his entire focus like it had been in years past, and it became a distraction. There was the infamous 2020 photo of him in bed with a woman, among other photos made public. Multiple sources said he brought women around the LSU football operations building. It all took place as his decision-making and coaching performance declined.

“It was just a distraction,” one LSU player said. “In 2019, there was no, ‘What’s Coach O doing postgame or Sunday during the day? Is he laying by the pool with a lady?’ He was planning events other than football.”

It created messes for him, like the time Orgeron pulled up to a woman at a gas station wearing exercise attire. “Hey, you look like you work out,” he said, according to multiple sources. “We could work out together.” The woman informed Orgeron she was married and pregnant, to which he responded, “Why does that matter?”

(Jamie Schwaberow / Getty Images)

That woman was the wife of a high-ranking LSU official. Word of this reached the LSU Board of Supervisors, the collection of prominent Louisiana attorneys and business owners appointed by the governor who make the most important decisions at LSU. And of course, it reached LSU athletic director Scott Woodward.

A program — and school — mired in a Title IX scandal

The off-field issues about Orgeron’s personal life were happening behind the scenes. Right at the forefront of the collegiate sports world was a Title IX scandal throughout LSU, headlined by accusations that former star running back Derrius Guice raped multiple students. It led to LSU launching an internal investigation run by the Husch Blackwell law firm, and most of the transgressions took place under former coach Les Miles’ watch. Orgeron was hardly mentioned in the report.

But then 74-year-old part-time Mercedes-Benz Superdome worker Gloria Scott came forward with allegations that Guice sexually harassed her at a high school football game. She said she spoke to Orgeron about the interaction and he did nothing. Orgeron denied speaking to Scott and said he was informed of the action by athletic department officials, and LSU then opened its own investigation. The situation got messier when a recording surfaced of a man said to be representing Scott asked LSU officials for money in exchange for Scott not going public. Scott said this man was not given permission to do this, and she also said Orgeron lied about not speaking to her.

Later, a lawsuit was filed against LSU by multiple victims accusing the university of not properly investigating sexual misconduct allegations. The lawsuit added Orgeron and his LLC as defendants as it accused Orgeron of being told, by a player, of an alleged Guice rape. The victim was the player’s then-girlfriend, and the lawsuit accuses Orgeron of knowing and not reporting it. Orgeron denied having any knowledge of the alleged rape, and the Husch Blackwell report found his denial credible. Those close to Orgeron found it noticeable that LSU administrators did little to point out these corrections publicly or to defend him. It was a signifier that support was fading.

Yet none of those issues, at the time, were enough for LSU to pursue firing Orgeron at the time. Multiple sources said these were all concerns and issues LSU monitored, but they all essentially went away with time.

Until LSU continued to lose.

And then came the losses

Orgeron is a loyal man who willingly serves at the request of his mentors. He reveres Jimmy Johnson and would run through a wall for Pete Carroll, and that extends to former bosses such as Paul Pasqualoni and Lane Kiffin. That’s how the man raised in the Cajun way views the world.

It’s why he was so angry and surprised when passing game coordinator Joe Brady turned down a $1.5 million raise from LSU to leave for the Carolina Panthers in January 2020. Orgeron felt like he plucked Brady out of a nothing job with the New Orleans Saints and helped make him a star, so he perceived that departure after one season as a lack of respect.

Following LSU’s national title season, when Orgeron had to replace Brady as well as defensive coordinator Dave Aranda (who left to become the head coach at Baylor), he turned to his mentors. To replace the cerebral Aranda, he called Carroll for advice. Carroll raved about Bo Pelini, calling him one of the best defensive minds he knows. Pelini was once the hottest defensive name in the game, LSU’s coordinator for its 2007 national championship under Miles and a successful head coach at Nebraska for seven years. So Orgeron hired Pelini for $2.3 million, despite admitting later he didn’t properly interview or vet him.

Pelini had spent the previous five years coaching FCS Youngstown State, where only once had he won more than six games. He hadn’t coached Power 5 football since 2014, and he hadn’t been in the SEC since 2007. And now Orgeron was instructing him to install an attacking 4-3 defense for the defending champs.

It failed. Miserably. LSU had its worst defensive season in program history, allowing 96 points in its first three games and opening the season allowing a record-shattering 623 yards to Mississippi State. A defense with multiple All-Americans and major talents looked lost and timid. There were constant breakdowns in coverage that led to receivers running free game after game. It ranked last in the SEC in explosive plays.

LSU finished 5-5, its worst season in 21 years, and suddenly all of that capital Orgeron once possessed had vanished. Orgeron had the cache to hire anyone he wanted in January 2020. What he did with it was hire Pelini without due diligence.

On offense, he hired as pass game coordinator Scott Linehan, a long-respected NFL offensive coordinator technically overqualified for the role but understood to be well behind on modern schemes. Orgeron had a staff primarily composed of older White men who were past their primes, not as skilled at recruiting and not well-suited for relating to a young, primarily Black roster. It was a group comprised of old buddies and favors made.

While the coaching hires were putting LSU behind already, there were also internal cultural issues. A few weeks before the 2020 season, Orgeron went on Fox News and — after being pressed multiple times — said “I love President Trump.” Sources said that upset a large portion of the locker room, with Black players hearing their coach saying he loves a president whom they perceived as touting racist policies and beliefs.

That sparked tension within LSU. Two weeks later, when teams across the country were skipping practices to hold peaceful protests of racial inequality after the death of George Floyd, Orgeron did not join his team. When the players asked Orgeron to take part, he sent assistant coaches to meet them and temper the situation. When Orgeron eventually met with his players in the LSU president’s office, sources said players were not happy with Orgeron’s contributions.

Former LSU star and current ESPN analyst Ryan Clark was involved through this process and spoke to the team in the weeks that followed. He pointed out to The Athletic that White players like quarterback Myles Brennanspoke and were honest that they didn’t understand all of the issues, but that they loved their teammates and wanted to support them. Clark said that’s all Orgeron had to do.

“It either meant you had no pulse on the situation,” Clark said, “or it meant that even with having a pulse on the situation, understanding what Black Americans and Black young men were going through at the time, you didn’t even care to fake it. That was an issue for me.”

One source described those weeks, saying: “It just kind of changed the attitude of our team. The best way to put it: It exposed our building.” It wasn’t irreparable damage. The normally apolitical Orgeron later marched with the team and said publicly he can’t continue to be oblivious. “If it’s affecting our players, I need to be educated on what’s going on, why it’s going on, listen to them, open up some dialogue and find some solutions,” he said.

(Chuck Cook / USA TODAY Sports)

It’s impossible to know how much these tensions lingered, but Orgeron was able to convince the majority of NFL draft-eligible players to return for the 2021 season. Then, in part due to a mandate from Woodward, Orgeron reshuffled his staff with a focus on getting drastically younger and more diverse. Relations seemed jovial all spring and summer. LSU was going to have an uber-experienced team with modern schemes and sharp young coaches.

The stage for a bounce-back season was set.

The comeback that wasn’t, and the end of Orgeron at LSU

The decline was swift and messy. While the 2020 season could be explained away with injuries, opt-outs and an unprecedented global pandemic, the 5-5 campaign put internal pressure on Orgeron to win — and fast. Still, it seemed LSU had the sort of roster and schedule to win nine or 10 games.

Instead, years of roster management issues and poor hires compiled for a situation in which the problems couldn’t be washed away with “talent.”

LSU opened the season getting embarrassed, 38-27, at UCLA. Even if the loss was excusable, frustration multiplied when, before the game, Orgeron was filmed shouting at a UCLA fan, “Bring ya ass on in your little sissy blue shirt.” UCLA made it into a meme and printed “sissy blue shirt” T-shirts.

Radio show hosts like Jordy Culotta — somebody who once had Orgeron on his Baton Rouge morning show each week — began torching Orgeron, telling stories of Orgeron confronting LSU boosters at a fishing camp and throwing chairs in a tirade over a pregame hype video. More unbecoming off-field stories came out with each poor on-field performance, and support for Orgeron waned.

LSU gave away a 13-0 lead against Auburn due to a shocking inability to run the ball. Then it got blown out, 42-21, at Kentucky. And the injuries kept piling up — from Derek Stingleyto Andre Anthony, Kayshon Boutte to Ali Gaye and so on — and faith kept dwindling. LSU kept finding new ways to lose.

Orgeron’s two young coordinator hires — Jake Peetz and Daronte Jones — may go on to good careers, but they also were first-time high-level coordinators perhaps not quite ready to call the shots for an SEC power in a must-win season. LSU’s roster, comprised largely of three consecutive top-five signing classes, had character issues and a lack of leadership. The offensive line became disastrous. Only six of the 10 highest-ranked players in his 2019 class are still with the team, due to issues ranging from academics to arrests to not being good enough. His biggest recruiting coup — five-star tight end Arik Gilbert — left the program midseason in 2020 due to personal issues.

A team that once had star leaders like Devin White, Joe Burrow, Grant Delpit, Damien Lewis, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Lloyd Cushenberry and Patrick Queen — who would call out people for slacking at practice or not putting in the extra work — now lacks those stars to hold anyone accountable. As one source put it, “There’s nobody there to stop the bleeding.”

Another said: “When your best players are the youngest guys on the team, it’s always interesting.”

There have been issues with how LSU practices and develops. When Orgeron first took over in 2016, he received acclaim for changing LSU’s practice strategies and operating with the “work smarter, not harder” philosophy. While it’s unclear if there was a conscious change, staffers have noticed Orgeron tense at practices and it leading to adjustments.

“We overdo things and the team is worn down,” one LSU coach said. “Some of the ‘really good recruits’ have deficiencies that aren’t strengthened. Talents aren’t maximized. His whole idea of ‘building a tough team’ since I got here has been a lot of uncommon practice techniques and thought processes. It’s just behind the times.”

And now a program that on paper is one of the five most talented in college football is falling toward the bottom of the SEC. A coach that took LSU to a national championship is unemployed two years later.

(Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)

Orgeron will now forever be linked to former Auburn coach Gene Chizik, a man also fired two years after winning a national championship in 2010. But many around Orgeron strongly consider that unfair. Chizik’s title felt like one superstar player, Cam Newton, lifting an average team to great heights. Chizik didn’t have another season over .500 in SEC play.

Orgeron is the coach who lifted LSU from its struggles and the man who led it off a cliff. He fixed many of the lingering issues from the Miles era — an outdated offense, a troubled culture — and recruited a deep and loaded team that produced 14 players selected in the 2020 NFL Draft. He got Burrow from Ohio State and found Brady out of nowhere with the Saints. He earned that national title.

And he earned this decline. He was dealt unfair hands like the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented injuries and star players opting out. But he also made the choices and actions that had LSU’s standard of performance drop a little each day.

“In 2019, everything went right,” a player under Orgeron said. “You had the right coaches, the right players, the right schemes, the right everything. Everything since then has been the wrong this, the wrong that, the wrong player, the wrong position, the wrong call. It’s literally the polar opposite of 2019.”

In the end, Woodward made his decision. The athletic director who grew up in Baton Rouge was always waiting for a chance to make his mark. But Woodward is patient and strategic. And eventually Orgeron built the case for Woodward.

One source who was quite critical of Orgeron admitted: “I really think Coach O could still get it together. He needs the reality check he’s getting now, but it’s too little, too late. It’s not like he’s not a guy who can’t do it again, but it went downhill so fast and he wasn’t able to recognize what was happening.”

Orgeron is the undisciplined hothead who fell apart at Ole Miss and the careful leader who constructed LSU’s 2019 juggernaut. He’s the paranoid plotter with rude nicknames and a man who carelessly makes mistakes without knowing it. And days after Hurricane Ida devastated South Louisiana, in particular his hometown of Larose, Orgeron was filmed (unbeknownst to him) on a Houston elevator getting asked about the damage. He told them Larose was “pounded.”

Then Orgeron’s eyes faded around the top of the elevator. He looked sad, the hurricane taking an emotional toll on the man from the bayou with the distinct voice.

“That’s what makes us who we are,” he said. “We fight. No matter what we do, we fight.”

Orgeron lived every possible version of his identity as head coach at LSU. He was the man who won the fight to bring LSU back to the highest of heights, and the man who lost the fight to keep the Tigers there.

 

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The Athletic - Inside Ed Orgeron’s fall from celebrated son of Louisiana to LSU coaching pariah
Spoiler

Five years ago, Ed Orgeron sped down I-12 at 6 a.m. with his head out the window of his black GMC truck blaring “Born on the Bayou” from Mandeville to Baton Rouge on the way to live out his dreams. Waiting for him outside the football operations building was athletic director Joe Alleva, preparing to offer him the LSU head coaching job. The kid from Larose, La., was going to become the most important public figure in his home state.
And somehow a lifetime has been lived within these five years, an LSU coaching tenure meandering from laughingstock to legend to statewide pariah. Few believed Orgeron should be LSU’s football coach. Then they thought he should hold the role for life. Now he’s been unceremoniously labeled a one-hit wonder and will soon be looking for a job.
LSU and Orgeron reached a separation agreement that will take effect after the season, sources tell The Athletic, confirming multiple reports. Orgeron is expected to get his full buyout, according to The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman. It comes less than two years after leading an undefeated national championship team in 2019 that some argued was the best in college football history. He followed that championship with a pair of up and down campaigns with two polar-opposite staffs, neither working to lift the Tigers. All of this included characteristic drama along the way.
The rise and fall of Orgeron can be defined by what happens when an already volatile man reaches the absolute peak of his profession, popularity and prestige right as he undergoes a public divorce through a pandemic while the world shifts around him. It’s about the difference between being able to learn from failure and being able to sustain that success.
Orgeron’s time at LSU wasn’t a repeat of his Ole Miss tenure. This wasn’t a downfall via chaotic behavior and driving assistants mad. It was a slow and steady whittling away of all the things that brought him and the program success. Add in a massive Title IX scandal in the university and the newly single Orgeron’s interactions with women bringing new distractions, and the changing off-field behavior coincided with declining on-field results.
“He lost track of who he was and what made him good from the national championship to now,” one source told The Athletic.
There were coordinator hires of coaches Orgeron admits to not fully interviewing and embarrassing interactions with fans. There were viral photos of him in bed with women. There were political comments that fractured the locker room and a poorly handled racial inequality protest. And there was a roster that lacked the leadership of LSU’s 2019 title team. All of this under a new athletic director who didn’t hire Orgeron and had no built-in loyalty to him.
There’s no one thing that brought Ed Orgeron down. If the championship was called a “perfect storm” that came together for greatness, so too was it a perfect storm that led to his demise.
“That doesn’t make him a bad coach,” one person close to the situation said. “It doesn’t make him a bad motivator. It doesn’t make him a bad recruiter. It doesn’t make him a bad person. He just lost track of who Coach O is a little bit and his sense of identity.”
When football became secondary
On the night LSU won the national championship in New Orleans, Orgeron went back to his hotel room around 2:30 a.m. with his wife, Kelly. They had nothing to eat, but somebody handed them some Popeyes chicken and the two finished off the box before falling asleep. By the time he woke up five hours later for a news conference, he was the man with the most capital in all of Louisiana.
Six weeks later, Orgeron filed for divorce.
In his 23 years married to Kelly, Orgeron generally kept a low social profile. His personality will always be larger than life, but he didn’t go out often and wasn’t known to socialize much. After battling alcoholism and a past involving arrests and restraining orders, Orgeron lived a more stable and private life for 23 years with “Miss Kelly.”
Then, at his most powerful — and his most wealthy — Orgeron was single again. He had just signed a six-year, $42 million extension and was a Louisiana hero. And he was going to enjoy it. “Something that had priority in his life that didn’t have a priority before was talking to (women),” one LSU source said. “That just became too high on the totem pole.”
To people and sources inside the program, there was no moral issue with Orgeron enjoying his life, but it was noticeable that football wasn’t his entire focus like it had been in years past, and it became a distraction. There was the infamous 2020 photo of him in bed with a woman, among other photos made public. Multiple sources said he brought women around the LSU football operations building. It all took place as his decision-making and coaching performance declined.
“It was just a distraction,” one LSU player said. “In 2019, there was no, ‘What’s Coach O doing postgame or Sunday during the day? Is he laying by the pool with a lady?’ He was planning events other than football.”
It created messes for him, like the time Orgeron pulled up to a woman at a gas station wearing exercise attire. “Hey, you look like you work out,” he said, according to multiple sources. “We could work out together.” The woman informed Orgeron she was married and pregnant, to which he responded, “Why does that matter?”
(Jamie Schwaberow / Getty Images)
That woman was the wife of a high-ranking LSU official. Word of this reached the LSU Board of Supervisors, the collection of prominent Louisiana attorneys and business owners appointed by the governor who make the most important decisions at LSU. And of course, it reached LSU athletic director Scott Woodward.
A program — and school — mired in a Title IX scandal
The off-field issues about Orgeron’s personal life were happening behind the scenes. Right at the forefront of the collegiate sports world was a Title IX scandal throughout LSU, headlined by accusations that former star running back Derrius Guice raped multiple students. It led to LSU launching an internal investigation run by the Husch Blackwell law firm, and most of the transgressions took place under former coach Les Miles’ watch. Orgeron was hardly mentioned in the report.
But then 74-year-old part-time Mercedes-Benz Superdome worker Gloria Scott came forward with allegations that Guice sexually harassed her at a high school football game. She said she spoke to Orgeron about the interaction and he did nothing. Orgeron denied speaking to Scott and said he was informed of the action by athletic department officials, and LSU then opened its own investigation. The situation got messier when a recording surfaced of a man said to be representing Scott asked LSU officials for money in exchange for Scott not going public. Scott said this man was not given permission to do this, and she also said Orgeron lied about not speaking to her.
Later, a lawsuit was filed against LSU by multiple victims accusing the university of not properly investigating sexual misconduct allegations. The lawsuit added Orgeron and his LLC as defendants as it accused Orgeron of being told, by a player, of an alleged Guice rape. The victim was the player’s then-girlfriend, and the lawsuit accuses Orgeron of knowing and not reporting it. Orgeron denied having any knowledge of the alleged rape, and the Husch Blackwell report found his denial credible. Those close to Orgeron found it noticeable that LSU administrators did little to point out these corrections publicly or to defend him. It was a signifier that support was fading.
Yet none of those issues, at the time, were enough for LSU to pursue firing Orgeron at the time. Multiple sources said these were all concerns and issues LSU monitored, but they all essentially went away with time.
Until LSU continued to lose.
And then came the losses
Orgeron is a loyal man who willingly serves at the request of his mentors. He reveres Jimmy Johnson and would run through a wall for Pete Carroll, and that extends to former bosses such as Paul Pasqualoni and Lane Kiffin. That’s how the man raised in the Cajun way views the world.
It’s why he was so angry and surprised when passing game coordinator Joe Brady turned down a $1.5 million raise from LSU to leave for the Carolina Panthers in January 2020. Orgeron felt like he plucked Brady out of a nothing job with the New Orleans Saints and helped make him a star, so he perceived that departure after one season as a lack of respect.
Following LSU’s national title season, when Orgeron had to replace Brady as well as defensive coordinator Dave Aranda (who left to become the head coach at Baylor), he turned to his mentors. To replace the cerebral Aranda, he called Carroll for advice. Carroll raved about Bo Pelini, calling him one of the best defensive minds he knows. Pelini was once the hottest defensive name in the game, LSU’s coordinator for its 2007 national championship under Miles and a successful head coach at Nebraska for seven years. So Orgeron hired Pelini for $2.3 million, despite admitting later he didn’t properly interview or vet him.
Pelini had spent the previous five years coaching FCS Youngstown State, where only once had he won more than six games. He hadn’t coached Power 5 football since 2014, and he hadn’t been in the SEC since 2007. And now Orgeron was instructing him to install an attacking 4-3 defense for the defending champs.
It failed. Miserably. LSU had its worst defensive season in program history, allowing 96 points in its first three games and opening the season allowing a record-shattering 623 yards to Mississippi State. A defense with multiple All-Americans and major talents looked lost and timid. There were constant breakdowns in coverage that led to receivers running free game after game. It ranked last in the SEC in explosive plays.
LSU finished 5-5, its worst season in 21 years, and suddenly all of that capital Orgeron once possessed had vanished. Orgeron had the cache to hire anyone he wanted in January 2020. What he did with it was hire Pelini without due diligence.
On offense, he hired as pass game coordinator Scott Linehan, a long-respected NFL offensive coordinator technically overqualified for the role but understood to be well behind on modern schemes. Orgeron had a staff primarily composed of older White men who were past their primes, not as skilled at recruiting and not well-suited for relating to a young, primarily Black roster. It was a group comprised of old buddies and favors made.
While the coaching hires were putting LSU behind already, there were also internal cultural issues. A few weeks before the 2020 season, Orgeron went on Fox News and — after being pressed multiple times — said “I love President Trump.” Sources said that upset a large portion of the locker room, with Black players hearing their coach saying he loves a president whom they perceived as touting racist policies and beliefs.
That sparked tension within LSU. Two weeks later, when teams across the country were skipping practices to hold peaceful protests of racial inequality after the death of George Floyd, Orgeron did not join his team. When the players asked Orgeron to take part, he sent assistant coaches to meet them and temper the situation. When Orgeron eventually met with his players in the LSU president’s office, sources said players were not happy with Orgeron’s contributions.
Former LSU star and current ESPN analyst Ryan Clark was involved through this process and spoke to the team in the weeks that followed. He pointed out to The Athletic that White players like quarterback Myles Brennanspoke and were honest that they didn’t understand all of the issues, but that they loved their teammates and wanted to support them. Clark said that’s all Orgeron had to do.
“It either meant you had no pulse on the situation,” Clark said, “or it meant that even with having a pulse on the situation, understanding what Black Americans and Black young men were going through at the time, you didn’t even care to fake it. That was an issue for me.”
One source described those weeks, saying: “It just kind of changed the attitude of our team. The best way to put it: It exposed our building.” It wasn’t irreparable damage. The normally apolitical Orgeron later marched with the team and said publicly he can’t continue to be oblivious. “If it’s affecting our players, I need to be educated on what’s going on, why it’s going on, listen to them, open up some dialogue and find some solutions,” he said.
(Chuck Cook / USA TODAY Sports)
It’s impossible to know how much these tensions lingered, but Orgeron was able to convince the majority of NFL draft-eligible players to return for the 2021 season. Then, in part due to a mandate from Woodward, Orgeron reshuffled his staff with a focus on getting drastically younger and more diverse. Relations seemed jovial all spring and summer. LSU was going to have an uber-experienced team with modern schemes and sharp young coaches.
The stage for a bounce-back season was set.
The comeback that wasn’t, and the end of Orgeron at LSU
The decline was swift and messy. While the 2020 season could be explained away with injuries, opt-outs and an unprecedented global pandemic, the 5-5 campaign put internal pressure on Orgeron to win — and fast. Still, it seemed LSU had the sort of roster and schedule to win nine or 10 games.
Instead, years of roster management issues and poor hires compiled for a situation in which the problems couldn’t be washed away with “talent.”
LSU opened the season getting embarrassed, 38-27, at UCLA. Even if the loss was excusable, frustration multiplied when, before the game, Orgeron was filmed shouting at a UCLA fan, “Bring ya ass on in your little sissy blue shirt.” UCLA made it into a meme and printed “sissy blue shirt” T-shirts.
Radio show hosts like Jordy Culotta — somebody who once had Orgeron on his Baton Rouge morning show each week — began torching Orgeron, telling stories of Orgeron confronting LSU boosters at a fishing camp and throwing chairs in a tirade over a pregame hype video. More unbecoming off-field stories came out with each poor on-field performance, and support for Orgeron waned.
LSU gave away a 13-0 lead against Auburn due to a shocking inability to run the ball. Then it got blown out, 42-21, at Kentucky. And the injuries kept piling up — from Derek Stingleyto Andre Anthony, Kayshon Boutte to Ali Gaye and so on — and faith kept dwindling. LSU kept finding new ways to lose.
Orgeron’s two young coordinator hires — Jake Peetz and Daronte Jones — may go on to good careers, but they also were first-time high-level coordinators perhaps not quite ready to call the shots for an SEC power in a must-win season. LSU’s roster, comprised largely of three consecutive top-five signing classes, had character issues and a lack of leadership. The offensive line became disastrous. Only six of the 10 highest-ranked players in his 2019 class are still with the team, due to issues ranging from academics to arrests to not being good enough. His biggest recruiting coup — five-star tight end Arik Gilbert — left the program midseason in 2020 due to personal issues.
A team that once had star leaders like Devin White, Joe Burrow, Grant Delpit, Damien Lewis, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Lloyd Cushenberry and Patrick Queen — who would call out people for slacking at practice or not putting in the extra work — now lacks those stars to hold anyone accountable. As one source put it, “There’s nobody there to stop the bleeding.”
Another said: “When your best players are the youngest guys on the team, it’s always interesting.”
There have been issues with how LSU practices and develops. When Orgeron first took over in 2016, he received acclaim for changing LSU’s practice strategies and operating with the “work smarter, not harder” philosophy. While it’s unclear if there was a conscious change, staffers have noticed Orgeron tense at practices and it leading to adjustments.
“We overdo things and the team is worn down,” one LSU coach said. “Some of the ‘really good recruits’ have deficiencies that aren’t strengthened. Talents aren’t maximized. His whole idea of ‘building a tough team’ since I got here has been a lot of uncommon practice techniques and thought processes. It’s just behind the times.”
And now a program that on paper is one of the five most talented in college football is falling toward the bottom of the SEC. A coach that took LSU to a national championship is unemployed two years later.
(Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)
Orgeron will now forever be linked to former Auburn coach Gene Chizik, a man also fired two years after winning a national championship in 2010. But many around Orgeron strongly consider that unfair. Chizik’s title felt like one superstar player, Cam Newton, lifting an average team to great heights. Chizik didn’t have another season over .500 in SEC play.
Orgeron is the coach who lifted LSU from its struggles and the man who led it off a cliff. He fixed many of the lingering issues from the Miles era — an outdated offense, a troubled culture — and recruited a deep and loaded team that produced 14 players selected in the 2020 NFL Draft. He got Burrow from Ohio State and found Brady out of nowhere with the Saints. He earned that national title.
And he earned this decline. He was dealt unfair hands like the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented injuries and star players opting out. But he also made the choices and actions that had LSU’s standard of performance drop a little each day.
“In 2019, everything went right,” a player under Orgeron said. “You had the right coaches, the right players, the right schemes, the right everything. Everything since then has been the wrong this, the wrong that, the wrong player, the wrong position, the wrong call. It’s literally the polar opposite of 2019.”
In the end, Woodward made his decision. The athletic director who grew up in Baton Rouge was always waiting for a chance to make his mark. But Woodward is patient and strategic. And eventually Orgeron built the case for Woodward.
One source who was quite critical of Orgeron admitted: “I really think Coach O could still get it together. He needs the reality check he’s getting now, but it’s too little, too late. It’s not like he’s not a guy who can’t do it again, but it went downhill so fast and he wasn’t able to recognize what was happening.”
Orgeron is the undisciplined hothead who fell apart at Ole Miss and the careful leader who constructed LSU’s 2019 juggernaut. He’s the paranoid plotter with rude nicknames and a man who carelessly makes mistakes without knowing it. And days after Hurricane Ida devastated South Louisiana, in particular his hometown of Larose, Orgeron was filmed (unbeknownst to him) on a Houston elevator getting asked about the damage. He told them Larose was “pounded.”
Then Orgeron’s eyes faded around the top of the elevator. He looked sad, the hurricane taking an emotional toll on the man from the bayou with the distinct voice.
“That’s what makes us who we are,” he said. “We fight. No matter what we do, we fight.”
Orgeron lived every possible version of his identity as head coach at LSU. He was the man who won the fight to bring LSU back to the highest of heights, and the man who lost the fight to keep the Tigers there.

 


Wow. They whipped up that article so quickly!

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TexasGolf

TexasGolf 4903

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4 minutes ago, Big Woodrows said:

The Athletic - Inside Ed Orgeron’s fall from celebrated son of Louisiana to LSU coaching pariah

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Five years ago, Ed Orgeron sped down I-12 at 6 a.m. with his head out the window of his black GMC truck blaring “Born on the Bayou” from Mandeville to Baton Rouge on the way to live out his dreams. Waiting for him outside the football operations building was athletic director Joe Alleva, preparing to offer him the LSU head coaching job. The kid from Larose, La., was going to become the most important public figure in his home state.

And somehow a lifetime has been lived within these five years, an LSU coaching tenure meandering from laughingstock to legend to statewide pariah. Few believed Orgeron should be LSU’s football coach. Then they thought he should hold the role for life. Now he’s been unceremoniously labeled a one-hit wonder and will soon be looking for a job.

LSU and Orgeron reached a separation agreement that will take effect after the season, sources tell The Athletic, confirming multiple reports. Orgeron is expected to get his full buyout, according to The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman. It comes less than two years after leading an undefeated national championship team in 2019 that some argued was the best in college football history. He followed that championship with a pair of up and down campaigns with two polar-opposite staffs, neither working to lift the Tigers. All of this included characteristic drama along the way.

The rise and fall of Orgeron can be defined by what happens when an already volatile man reaches the absolute peak of his profession, popularity and prestige right as he undergoes a public divorce through a pandemic while the world shifts around him. It’s about the difference between being able to learn from failure and being able to sustain that success.

Orgeron’s time at LSU wasn’t a repeat of his Ole Miss tenure. This wasn’t a downfall via chaotic behavior and driving assistants mad. It was a slow and steady whittling away of all the things that brought him and the program success. Add in a massive Title IX scandal in the university and the newly single Orgeron’s interactions with women bringing new distractions, and the changing off-field behavior coincided with declining on-field results.

“He lost track of who he was and what made him good from the national championship to now,” one source told The Athletic.

There were coordinator hires of coaches Orgeron admits to not fully interviewing and embarrassing interactions with fans. There were viral photos of him in bed with women. There were political comments that fractured the locker room and a poorly handled racial inequality protest. And there was a roster that lacked the leadership of LSU’s 2019 title team. All of this under a new athletic director who didn’t hire Orgeron and had no built-in loyalty to him.

There’s no one thing that brought Ed Orgeron down. If the championship was called a “perfect storm” that came together for greatness, so too was it a perfect storm that led to his demise.

“That doesn’t make him a bad coach,” one person close to the situation said. “It doesn’t make him a bad motivator. It doesn’t make him a bad recruiter. It doesn’t make him a bad person. He just lost track of who Coach O is a little bit and his sense of identity.”

When football became secondary

On the night LSU won the national championship in New Orleans, Orgeron went back to his hotel room around 2:30 a.m. with his wife, Kelly. They had nothing to eat, but somebody handed them some Popeyes chicken and the two finished off the box before falling asleep. By the time he woke up five hours later for a news conference, he was the man with the most capital in all of Louisiana.

Six weeks later, Orgeron filed for divorce.

In his 23 years married to Kelly, Orgeron generally kept a low social profile. His personality will always be larger than life, but he didn’t go out often and wasn’t known to socialize much. After battling alcoholism and a past involving arrests and restraining orders, Orgeron lived a more stable and private life for 23 years with “Miss Kelly.”

Then, at his most powerful — and his most wealthy — Orgeron was single again. He had just signed a six-year, $42 million extension and was a Louisiana hero. And he was going to enjoy it. “Something that had priority in his life that didn’t have a priority before was talking to (women),” one LSU source said. “That just became too high on the totem pole.”

To people and sources inside the program, there was no moral issue with Orgeron enjoying his life, but it was noticeable that football wasn’t his entire focus like it had been in years past, and it became a distraction. There was the infamous 2020 photo of him in bed with a woman, among other photos made public. Multiple sources said he brought women around the LSU football operations building. It all took place as his decision-making and coaching performance declined.

“It was just a distraction,” one LSU player said. “In 2019, there was no, ‘What’s Coach O doing postgame or Sunday during the day? Is he laying by the pool with a lady?’ He was planning events other than football.”

It created messes for him, like the time Orgeron pulled up to a woman at a gas station wearing exercise attire. “Hey, you look like you work out,” he said, according to multiple sources. “We could work out together.” The woman informed Orgeron she was married and pregnant, to which he responded, “Why does that matter?”

(Jamie Schwaberow / Getty Images)

That woman was the wife of a high-ranking LSU official. Word of this reached the LSU Board of Supervisors, the collection of prominent Louisiana attorneys and business owners appointed by the governor who make the most important decisions at LSU. And of course, it reached LSU athletic director Scott Woodward.

A program — and school — mired in a Title IX scandal

The off-field issues about Orgeron’s personal life were happening behind the scenes. Right at the forefront of the collegiate sports world was a Title IX scandal throughout LSU, headlined by accusations that former star running back Derrius Guice raped multiple students. It led to LSU launching an internal investigation run by the Husch Blackwell law firm, and most of the transgressions took place under former coach Les Miles’ watch. Orgeron was hardly mentioned in the report.

But then 74-year-old part-time Mercedes-Benz Superdome worker Gloria Scott came forward with allegations that Guice sexually harassed her at a high school football game. She said she spoke to Orgeron about the interaction and he did nothing. Orgeron denied speaking to Scott and said he was informed of the action by athletic department officials, and LSU then opened its own investigation. The situation got messier when a recording surfaced of a man said to be representing Scott asked LSU officials for money in exchange for Scott not going public. Scott said this man was not given permission to do this, and she also said Orgeron lied about not speaking to her.

Later, a lawsuit was filed against LSU by multiple victims accusing the university of not properly investigating sexual misconduct allegations. The lawsuit added Orgeron and his LLC as defendants as it accused Orgeron of being told, by a player, of an alleged Guice rape. The victim was the player’s then-girlfriend, and the lawsuit accuses Orgeron of knowing and not reporting it. Orgeron denied having any knowledge of the alleged rape, and the Husch Blackwell report found his denial credible. Those close to Orgeron found it noticeable that LSU administrators did little to point out these corrections publicly or to defend him. It was a signifier that support was fading.

Yet none of those issues, at the time, were enough for LSU to pursue firing Orgeron at the time. Multiple sources said these were all concerns and issues LSU monitored, but they all essentially went away with time.

Until LSU continued to lose.

And then came the losses

Orgeron is a loyal man who willingly serves at the request of his mentors. He reveres Jimmy Johnson and would run through a wall for Pete Carroll, and that extends to former bosses such as Paul Pasqualoni and Lane Kiffin. That’s how the man raised in the Cajun way views the world.

It’s why he was so angry and surprised when passing game coordinator Joe Brady turned down a $1.5 million raise from LSU to leave for the Carolina Panthers in January 2020. Orgeron felt like he plucked Brady out of a nothing job with the New Orleans Saints and helped make him a star, so he perceived that departure after one season as a lack of respect.

Following LSU’s national title season, when Orgeron had to replace Brady as well as defensive coordinator Dave Aranda (who left to become the head coach at Baylor), he turned to his mentors. To replace the cerebral Aranda, he called Carroll for advice. Carroll raved about Bo Pelini, calling him one of the best defensive minds he knows. Pelini was once the hottest defensive name in the game, LSU’s coordinator for its 2007 national championship under Miles and a successful head coach at Nebraska for seven years. So Orgeron hired Pelini for $2.3 million, despite admitting later he didn’t properly interview or vet him.

Pelini had spent the previous five years coaching FCS Youngstown State, where only once had he won more than six games. He hadn’t coached Power 5 football since 2014, and he hadn’t been in the SEC since 2007. And now Orgeron was instructing him to install an attacking 4-3 defense for the defending champs.

It failed. Miserably. LSU had its worst defensive season in program history, allowing 96 points in its first three games and opening the season allowing a record-shattering 623 yards to Mississippi State. A defense with multiple All-Americans and major talents looked lost and timid. There were constant breakdowns in coverage that led to receivers running free game after game. It ranked last in the SEC in explosive plays.

LSU finished 5-5, its worst season in 21 years, and suddenly all of that capital Orgeron once possessed had vanished. Orgeron had the cache to hire anyone he wanted in January 2020. What he did with it was hire Pelini without due diligence.

On offense, he hired as pass game coordinator Scott Linehan, a long-respected NFL offensive coordinator technically overqualified for the role but understood to be well behind on modern schemes. Orgeron had a staff primarily composed of older White men who were past their primes, not as skilled at recruiting and not well-suited for relating to a young, primarily Black roster. It was a group comprised of old buddies and favors made.

While the coaching hires were putting LSU behind already, there were also internal cultural issues. A few weeks before the 2020 season, Orgeron went on Fox News and — after being pressed multiple times — said “I love President Trump.” Sources said that upset a large portion of the locker room, with Black players hearing their coach saying he loves a president whom they perceived as touting racist policies and beliefs.

That sparked tension within LSU. Two weeks later, when teams across the country were skipping practices to hold peaceful protests of racial inequality after the death of George Floyd, Orgeron did not join his team. When the players asked Orgeron to take part, he sent assistant coaches to meet them and temper the situation. When Orgeron eventually met with his players in the LSU president’s office, sources said players were not happy with Orgeron’s contributions.

Former LSU star and current ESPN analyst Ryan Clark was involved through this process and spoke to the team in the weeks that followed. He pointed out to The Athletic that White players like quarterback Myles Brennanspoke and were honest that they didn’t understand all of the issues, but that they loved their teammates and wanted to support them. Clark said that’s all Orgeron had to do.

“It either meant you had no pulse on the situation,” Clark said, “or it meant that even with having a pulse on the situation, understanding what Black Americans and Black young men were going through at the time, you didn’t even care to fake it. That was an issue for me.”

One source described those weeks, saying: “It just kind of changed the attitude of our team. The best way to put it: It exposed our building.” It wasn’t irreparable damage. The normally apolitical Orgeron later marched with the team and said publicly he can’t continue to be oblivious. “If it’s affecting our players, I need to be educated on what’s going on, why it’s going on, listen to them, open up some dialogue and find some solutions,” he said.

(Chuck Cook / USA TODAY Sports)

It’s impossible to know how much these tensions lingered, but Orgeron was able to convince the majority of NFL draft-eligible players to return for the 2021 season. Then, in part due to a mandate from Woodward, Orgeron reshuffled his staff with a focus on getting drastically younger and more diverse. Relations seemed jovial all spring and summer. LSU was going to have an uber-experienced team with modern schemes and sharp young coaches.

The stage for a bounce-back season was set.

The comeback that wasn’t, and the end of Orgeron at LSU

The decline was swift and messy. While the 2020 season could be explained away with injuries, opt-outs and an unprecedented global pandemic, the 5-5 campaign put internal pressure on Orgeron to win — and fast. Still, it seemed LSU had the sort of roster and schedule to win nine or 10 games.

Instead, years of roster management issues and poor hires compiled for a situation in which the problems couldn’t be washed away with “talent.”

LSU opened the season getting embarrassed, 38-27, at UCLA. Even if the loss was excusable, frustration multiplied when, before the game, Orgeron was filmed shouting at a UCLA fan, “Bring ya ass on in your little sissy blue shirt.” UCLA made it into a meme and printed “sissy blue shirt” T-shirts.

Radio show hosts like Jordy Culotta — somebody who once had Orgeron on his Baton Rouge morning show each week — began torching Orgeron, telling stories of Orgeron confronting LSU boosters at a fishing camp and throwing chairs in a tirade over a pregame hype video. More unbecoming off-field stories came out with each poor on-field performance, and support for Orgeron waned.

LSU gave away a 13-0 lead against Auburn due to a shocking inability to run the ball. Then it got blown out, 42-21, at Kentucky. And the injuries kept piling up — from Derek Stingleyto Andre Anthony, Kayshon Boutte to Ali Gaye and so on — and faith kept dwindling. LSU kept finding new ways to lose.

Orgeron’s two young coordinator hires — Jake Peetz and Daronte Jones — may go on to good careers, but they also were first-time high-level coordinators perhaps not quite ready to call the shots for an SEC power in a must-win season. LSU’s roster, comprised largely of three consecutive top-five signing classes, had character issues and a lack of leadership. The offensive line became disastrous. Only six of the 10 highest-ranked players in his 2019 class are still with the team, due to issues ranging from academics to arrests to not being good enough. His biggest recruiting coup — five-star tight end Arik Gilbert — left the program midseason in 2020 due to personal issues.

A team that once had star leaders like Devin White, Joe Burrow, Grant Delpit, Damien Lewis, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Lloyd Cushenberry and Patrick Queen — who would call out people for slacking at practice or not putting in the extra work — now lacks those stars to hold anyone accountable. As one source put it, “There’s nobody there to stop the bleeding.”

Another said: “When your best players are the youngest guys on the team, it’s always interesting.”

There have been issues with how LSU practices and develops. When Orgeron first took over in 2016, he received acclaim for changing LSU’s practice strategies and operating with the “work smarter, not harder” philosophy. While it’s unclear if there was a conscious change, staffers have noticed Orgeron tense at practices and it leading to adjustments.

“We overdo things and the team is worn down,” one LSU coach said. “Some of the ‘really good recruits’ have deficiencies that aren’t strengthened. Talents aren’t maximized. His whole idea of ‘building a tough team’ since I got here has been a lot of uncommon practice techniques and thought processes. It’s just behind the times.”

And now a program that on paper is one of the five most talented in college football is falling toward the bottom of the SEC. A coach that took LSU to a national championship is unemployed two years later.

(Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)

Orgeron will now forever be linked to former Auburn coach Gene Chizik, a man also fired two years after winning a national championship in 2010. But many around Orgeron strongly consider that unfair. Chizik’s title felt like one superstar player, Cam Newton, lifting an average team to great heights. Chizik didn’t have another season over .500 in SEC play.

Orgeron is the coach who lifted LSU from its struggles and the man who led it off a cliff. He fixed many of the lingering issues from the Miles era — an outdated offense, a troubled culture — and recruited a deep and loaded team that produced 14 players selected in the 2020 NFL Draft. He got Burrow from Ohio State and found Brady out of nowhere with the Saints. He earned that national title.

And he earned this decline. He was dealt unfair hands like the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented injuries and star players opting out. But he also made the choices and actions that had LSU’s standard of performance drop a little each day.

“In 2019, everything went right,” a player under Orgeron said. “You had the right coaches, the right players, the right schemes, the right everything. Everything since then has been the wrong this, the wrong that, the wrong player, the wrong position, the wrong call. It’s literally the polar opposite of 2019.”

In the end, Woodward made his decision. The athletic director who grew up in Baton Rouge was always waiting for a chance to make his mark. But Woodward is patient and strategic. And eventually Orgeron built the case for Woodward.

One source who was quite critical of Orgeron admitted: “I really think Coach O could still get it together. He needs the reality check he’s getting now, but it’s too little, too late. It’s not like he’s not a guy who can’t do it again, but it went downhill so fast and he wasn’t able to recognize what was happening.”

Orgeron is the undisciplined hothead who fell apart at Ole Miss and the careful leader who constructed LSU’s 2019 juggernaut. He’s the paranoid plotter with rude nicknames and a man who carelessly makes mistakes without knowing it. And days after Hurricane Ida devastated South Louisiana, in particular his hometown of Larose, Orgeron was filmed (unbeknownst to him) on a Houston elevator getting asked about the damage. He told them Larose was “pounded.”

Then Orgeron’s eyes faded around the top of the elevator. He looked sad, the hurricane taking an emotional toll on the man from the bayou with the distinct voice.

“That’s what makes us who we are,” he said. “We fight. No matter what we do, we fight.”

Orgeron lived every possible version of his identity as head coach at LSU. He was the man who won the fight to bring LSU back to the highest of heights, and the man who lost the fight to keep the Tigers there.

 

Tr;dr. Cliff notes — pussy undefeated  

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fattyflattie

fattyflattie 4639

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9 minutes ago, Hank_Hill said:

I mean he can’t possibly get paid the remainder of his contract if he walks…right? That’d be just so aggy. Bigger thing is if he’ll take a pay reduction to go to LSU I guess

No he doesn’t get paid. But can walk away if he pleases.  Very shrewd negotiating over in lit station. 

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aggie08

aggie08 21504

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21 minutes ago, immamac said:

Jimbo has a 0 dollar buy out. TAMU signed a 100% guaranteed contract with no recourse for him just leaving when he wants to. 

If Jimbo wants to leave $95M guaranteed on the table where all he has to do is show up, finish above .500, and sway back and forth post game after beating UTEP, then I'll personally shake his hand, wish him the best of luck, and do a little jig when he turns around.

He's never leaving.

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Big Woodrows

Big Woodrows 4200

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3 minutes ago, Tex-19 said:

Anyone got this one? https://theathletic.com/2893972/2021/10/17/lsus-next-football-coach-bruce-feldmans-candidates-to-watch-including-a-current-rival-coach-in-the-sec-west/

Spoiler

Ed Orgeron, who led LSU to the 2019 national title, will not be brought back as LSU’s head coach after this season, less than two years after winning a championship, sources tell The Athletic, confirming multiple reports. The Tigers are 4-3 and coming off a win over No. 20 Florida on Saturday. Athletic director Scott Woodward’s search process began well before the Tigers beat the Gators, though.

Woodward has a track record of splashy hires that include snagging Chris Petersen from Boise State when he was the AD at Washington and hiring Jimbo Fisher away from FSU to go to Texas A&M while he was in College Station.

Jimbo Fisher, Texas A&M: Fisher, who worked at LSU under Nick Saban, would seem like a possible target for Woodward. He won a national title at FSU before the Seminoles began to backslide and had a breakout season with the Aggies in 2020, leading Texas A&M into the AP top 5. He is 14-3 in the past two seasons with a signature win over his mentor Saban on Oct. 9 in College Station. A&M is, however, paying Fisher a fortune and the program has great resources. He’s also already laid his foundation at A&M. But would he be tempted to Baton Rouge, where each of the last three coaches have won national titles? That level of success has proven to be much more elusive in College Station.

Mel Tucker, Michigan State: Sources tell The Athletic that a coach to keep an eye on is Spartans coach Tucker. I’m told some very influential people inside LSU are really enamored with Tucker, a former Tigers assistant under Saban who knows the SEC very well from his time there and as a coach at Alabama and Georgia. The 49-year-old Ohio native is 9-5 in his two seasons at MSU, but is 7-0 in his second season. He went 5-7 in his one season at Colorado before returning to the Midwest. Would Tucker be willing to move to a third program in four years? We’re not sure, but we do know he has some ardent admirers in Baton Rouge.

Four other coaches we think LSU might also give strong consideration

James Franklin, Penn State: Franklin has coached in the SEC before and did remarkable work at Vanderbilt before he left to restore Penn State into a powerhouse. We think Franklin is a prime target for the USC head coaching search. Both of these are top-5 caliber jobs. LSU has a better track record of success than USC, but the Trojans don’t have Saban in their division or Georgia in the other side of the conference. Woodward loves big-name hires and short of Fisher, this would probably be as big as he could get.

Mario Cristobal, Oregon: Cristobal is like Orgeron, an intense former lineman who is a recruiting machine. Cristobal is another Saban protégé who played on some powerhouse Miami teams in its glory days. He took the Alabama recruiting model and the Canes attitude to Eugene. He’s won Rose Bowls and Pac-12 titles and created a new identity for the Ducks. He got a signature win earlier this year, thumping Ohio State in Columbus in Week 2. He’s also 4-1 in his last five games against top-10 opponents. His buyout is around $9 million, and it doesn’t drop to $6.5 million until Jan. 15, 2022. He also knows his next two Ducks teams have the kind of talent that could make them national title contenders. Does he want to return to the SEC?

Mark Stoops, Kentucky: Stoops’ team hammered LSU last week in Lexington. Stoops has been a terrific hire at Kentucky. Stoops is primed to lead the Wildcats to their second double-digit win season in a four-year stretch at a place that only had won more than eight games four times in the previous 100-plus seasons. Stoops has continued to build the program with sound evaluation and development. He knows he has a good situation in Lexington, but sustaining a top-10 program there would be unprecedented. Stoops could also become a candidate at Miami, where he was an assistant, if that job opens.

Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss: Kiffin is more of a wild card candidate. He was close to joining Orgeron’s initial staff at LSU as offensive coordinator had he not gotten the head coaching job at FAU. Kiffin did an excellent job in Boca Raton and is off to a nice start at Ole Miss, going 10-6 — although his team did lose last year to a wobbly LSU team. Kiffin is a terrific offensive mind, but does have some baggage from his previous stops that might give some ADs pause as to whether they feel comfortable with him in charge. Kiffin does seem to have settled down and grown from his earlier days as a coach, which bodes well for his prospects, especially as the Rebels continue to ascend.

Seems like Jimbo is just mentioned because it'd be a logical choice, not because he's heard any chatter (yet)

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CooterBrown

CooterBrown 18010

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No he doesn’t get paid. But can walk away if he pleases.  Very shrewd negotiating over in lit station. 

Just don’t quit aggy. Come to an agreement with LSU that his new contract starts the day after he is fired by aggy. Then abandon aggy and start working at LSU without a contract. Aggy will have to fire him and pay him or they don’t fire him and still have to pay him.
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Tex-19

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6 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

If Jimbo wants to leave $95M guaranteed on the table where all he has to do is show up, finish above .500, and sway back and forth post game after beating UTEP, then I'll personally shake his hand, wish him the best of luck, and do a little jig when he turns around.

He's never leaving.

Who says he has to finish above .500? That 95mm is guaranteed as long as he shows up. I honestly don't know why he even risks dropping bags for recruits there when I'd assume some kind of violation is the only way he loses that money.

Just now, fattyflattie said:

Best we can hope for is Jimbo gets his  buddy Woodard to get rumors he’s a top target out there.  Sexton approaches aggy about it. They either balk at additional money, planting the first seed of discontent, or they pay him more and the additional pressure that comes with that.  Win win. 

Rumors seem highly likely. It's Jimbo and Sexton's MO. He'll probably get another raise especially with the Bama win and stay at aggy for life.

7 minutes ago, Dr. Teeth said:

At this point, I’d rather Jimbo’s stale offense stay at A&M and not give them an opportunity to hire Traylor. 

Meh Jimbo's recruiting hurts us. He's good at that. Agree that he's too behind the times to be a perennial contender, but he'll have them getting top 5-10 recruiting classes and top 10-15 on the field.

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Blotto

Blotto 23499

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8 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

If Jimbo wants to leave $95M guaranteed on the table where all he has to do is show up, finish above .500, and sway back and forth post game after beating UTEP, then I'll personally shake his hand and wish him the best of luck.

He's never leaving.

nobody (not even LSU) can match aggy's desperation. I agree Jimbo aint going anywhere.  

1 minute ago, fattyflattie said:

Best we can hope for is Jimbo gets his  buddy Woodard to get rumors he’s a top target out there.  Sexton approaches aggy about it. They either balk at additional money, planting the first seed of discontent, or they pay him more and the additional pressure that comes with that.  Win win. 

The idea that aggy would add yet more money to that ridiculous contract is so preposterous I have to laugh at the idea . and then I realize that they absolutely will if given the opportunity. 

My guess is aranda is the guy LSU wants. younger, cheaper, and presumably not a cuck. 

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Js1

Js1 85325

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1 minute ago, Tex-19 said:

A lot of initial Mel Tucker buzz. Seems odd given his very limited track record as a HC and lack of LA ties (one season at LSU 20 years ago)

Not Woodward’s MO - Jimbo at Aggy, stealing Mulkey from Baylor. He’s going to go way bigger than Tucker or Aranda 

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Deej

Deej 76773

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27 minutes ago, Dr. Teeth said:

At this point, I’d rather Jimbo’s stale offense stay at A&M and not give them an opportunity to hire Traylor. 

aggy wouldn't hire Traylor. All their decisions are based on the "look at us!" factor.

  • Hook 'Em 1
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Tex-19

Tex-19 2872

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Posted

One interesting thing re: Jimbo. LSU was already paying Coach O $9mm/year. So matching Jimbo's current salary would actually be basically a neutral expense. The only real difference is the 10-year guarantee. In other words, they can afford it. Just a question of the guarantee, whether they think he's worth it, and whether he'd leave right after signing an extension.

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jw4381

jw4381 3072

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2 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

Jesus titty fucking Chr….

Step away from the team.  Reclaim your falls.  Enjoy the play offs. Take a fucking mental health break if you can’t stomach this shit.

You’re a sentient sack of meat on a speck of dust hurtling through an infinite void. From a universal time perspective, your time here isn’t even worth measuring. Try to enjoy it.
 

Mind Blowing GIF by Carrefour France

59 minutes ago, sportsbay said:

How much would you pay, going back as your 48-49 year old self, to re-live one of those really good party weekends? ~~~ Just one.

With or without the hangover?

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Tex-19

Tex-19 2872

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6 minutes ago, 0xdeadbeef said:

Jimbo leaving Aggie for LSU is the most delusional thing I've read since Nicky boy was supposed to leave for Texas. 

 

I don't think it happens, but it's not as crazy as it seems. LSU was already paying $9mm/year for O so they can afford to match his pay. Woodward hired Jimbo to Aggy and they're friends. Next year is a rebuilding year for Aggy with tons of starters leaving. Elko likely getting a HC job soon. Aggy is losing their main recruiting pitches in Texas (SEC and $$$). 

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Surly Bevo

Surly Bevo 24908

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Posted (edited)

On the Jimbo front $$$ isn't the issue for him or LSU nor is anything related to some moral compass Jimbo may have (he doesn't) with regard to "I just signed an extension".  If LSU is interested it will come down to which group of weirdos he's more comfortable with.

Edited by Surly Bevo
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fattyflattie

fattyflattie 4639

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12 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

On the Jimbo front $$$ isn't the issue for him or LSU nor is anything related to some moral compass Jimbo may have (he doesn't) with regard to "I just signed an extension".  If LSU is interested it will come down to which group of weirdos he's more comfortable with.

There’s also that thing where he can win at one place and not the other. I mean, three coaches with NC in 20 yrs vs some guy like 80 years ago when the worlds eyes was on what was happening in Poland. 

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