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Les Miles the next Head Coach at Kansas

Vic Mackey

By Vic Mackey
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Jhawk

Jhawk 1,075

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Miles said that over a dozen HS coaches have contacted him already about recruits he should be talking to.  Obviously that could be coach speak but that is exactly the bump we are looking for to get this program started again.  That is why a school like Kansas hires a 65 year old national championship coach.

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 49,996

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11 hours ago, LTtxfan said:

Yeah, I heard that too.  But he better update his offensive beliefs and hire a more rpo OC if he wants to attract today's more athletic QB'S that participate in 7-on-7 football....

Article link below has following quote:

"When Miles was fired early in the 2016 season after a loss at Auburn, the knock was that he had been unwilling to evolve offensively, sticking to a conventional power-based offense while most of college football – including rival Alabama – moved toward the fast-paced spread. While out of coaching, Miles has indicated he was ready to adjust to the changed offensive game."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/columnist/george-schroeder/2018/11/18/les-miles-kansas-coach/2047761002/

Edited by LTtxfan
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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 49,996

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The wild Big 12 gets even more fun with Les Miles' return

By: Jake Trotter ESPN Staff Writer

On Sunday, arguably the country's most entertaining conference, heavy on high-flying offenses, electric quarterbacks and dramatic last-second finishes -- and yes, light on defense -- added back one of the most entertaining figures from its past.

Les Miles has returned to the Big 12.  And with the man they call "The Hat" at Kansas, the Jayhawks will "play any sucker in this country." And, of course, won't be afraid to "let 'er rip."

In the first head-coaching job of his career, Miles stayed at Oklahoma State for just four seasons, from 2001 to 2004. And yet before leaving for LSU, Miles constantly generated quotable phrases, upset Oklahoma twice and even traded verbal jabs with Bob Stoops.

Miles also won a lot of games, setting the foundation in attitude for his offensive coordinator and eventual successor, Mike Gundy, to take Oklahoma State into its golden age.

Who knows if Miles will be able to "break the cycle," as Kansas athletic director Jeff Long called it, in Lawrence.

The Jayhawks face overwhelming obstacles that Oklahoma State didn't at the turn of the century. Kansas still has yet to completely make up the depleted scholarship numbers from the Charlie Weis days. And the significant talent gap from the rest of the league remains. The same goes for facilities. And though Kansas launched a $350 million capital campaign last year to renovate Memorial Stadium, the Jayhawks also don't have a T. Boone Pickens to bankroll the project.

Yet whatever happens initially on the field, Miles will bring some desperately needed excitement to Kansas, where an empty Memorial Stadium has become the norm. And Miles most definitely will up the entertainment level in the Big 12, once again.

"He can be animated about the way he gets his guys ready to play," said former Oklahoma State wide receiver Rashaun Woods, who was Miles' most decorated player in Stillwater.

That can include tweaking rivals to galvanize both his fan base and his players.

In 2001, Miles coached Oklahoma State to what remains perhaps the biggest upset in Big 12 history. The four-touchdown-underdog Cowboys knocked Oklahoma out of the national championship conversation in Norman with a 16-13 victory on Woods' game-winning scoring grab. Not long after, Miles boasted to a group of Oklahoma State boosters that the Cowboys should've won by more, which got back to Stoops, who retorted that he and Miles could compare championship hardware.

Miles wasn't done, however, pouring kerosene on the rivalry, which he won again in 2002, stunningly leading at one point 35-6.

 

The week before the 2003 Bedlam matchup, Miles said on TV that "two teams are going to play. One is maybe the best team in college football and the other one is a darn good football team. We're going to play to figure out which one is which." And then moments before kickoff, he proclaimed to then-ABC sideline reporter Lynn Swann that his team would "Let 'er rip."

The Sooners would restore their dominance in the series with a 52-9 blowout, and at one point, defensive coordinator Mike Stoops walked out onto the field and gestured to Miles, asking if he wanted more.

Miles clearly had Oklahoma's attention in a way the Cowboys rarely had before. He also had Oklahoma State believing it could compete with the best in the Big 12, underscored by his comment about his team after a narrow defeat in Bedlam in 2004: "I'll take them around and I'll play any sucker in this country."

That year, Miles left to go to LSU, where he would go on to win a national championship. Yet before he did, he left an indelible mark at Oklahoma State, helping kick-start the Cowboys' improbable rise to prominence, which has included a half-dozen double-digit win totals this decade."It's gonna be a tall order, to get that place turned around," Woods said. "But if somebody can do it, why not somebody who's done it before. People were saying a lot of those same things about Oklahoma State at one point. Look at OSU now. He's not the only reason. But he played a part in the early stages of Oklahoma State becoming a team that now competes for Big 12 titles."

Kansas competing for Big 12 titles feels like a lifetime away. But if his last stint in the league is any indication, Miles won't be backing down from the Sooners or the Longhorns or his former offensive coordinator at his former school.

He'll also be eating grass and pushing the envelope in extreme clock management.

The Hat is back. Which means, the Big 12 just got all the more fun.

 

http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/25315810/les-miles-return-big-12-kansas-makes-league-even-more-fun

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Jhawk

Jhawk 1,075

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8 hours ago, hornian said:

Sarcasm eludes you

Oh I got the sarcasm. It’s just that the situation is so dire that you have to shut it down immediately. I posted our defensive statistics earlier. Yesterday we had a writer publish a story on how our DC was one of the best in the country and it would be foolish for him not to be retained because he “loved Kansas”. The dude has been a staple of our misery for 9 years and even though his average defense is ranked near 100 in total D we have tons of people inside the AD, the donor pool, and the media that think his love for the university should afford him his position regardless of who the coach is or his performance in his roll. 

Its life of death for KU football right now and we still have people wanting to march under the drumbeat of the old guard. You have to shoot that shit down ASAP, regardless of the tone of the convo. 

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 49,996

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https://www.si.com/college-football/2018/11/18/les-miles-kansas-jayhawks-named-new-head-coach

 

Did Kansas Make the Right Hire? Les Miles Doesn’t Care What You Think

By ROSS DELLENGER 
November 18, 2018

Les Miles thought he could act in feature films. No, really, he played a NASA engineer in one and a police officer in another. A third film was in the works, and it involved, of all things, horse racing (let your imagination run wild on that one).

Miles thought he could work in media as well. He served as an analyst for one Nebraska game last year and made headlines by using “we” during the broadcast (his son Ben used to play for the Cornhuskers). When they moved him into the studio, Miles walked off the set while cameras were rolling and with his mic hot, searching for the bathroom. “Is there a restroom? I gotta go,” he can be heard asking an ESPN staff member off camera. Producers, thankfully, shut off his mic before he found the toilets. 

 

Miles thought, and might still think, he can fly a plane. According to those close to him, he began aerial training. Miles thought he could have a career as a star in football-centric TV commercials, too, and honestly, he did that pretty well, as a grass-eating coach in charge of watering a football field with Dos Equis beer. 

 

Now, Miles thinks he can coach Kansas, and he couldn’t care less what you think about it. Just like the forays into acting and media, Miles thinks he can do anything. He’s so confident in his abilities that he kept operating an antiquated offense right up until the day LSU fired him in September of 2016, even when administrators urged him to change. He’s so hardheaded and stubborn that he called a toss dive on the first play of his final season, an up-yours move directed toward said administration.

 

He’s so committed to his team that many believe he reversed a decision to leave LSU for Michigan in 2007 after ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit reported the story live on air before the Tigers played in the SEC championship game. Surely you remember his impromptu news conference with reporters that day. “I got a championship game to play, and I’m excited about the opportunity of my damn strong football team,” he said. 

 

But maybe this one tops the list. So many in the college football world are privately snickering at a 65-year-old man, known for his archaic offense, assuming a rebuilding effort of the country’s worst program over the last decade. Miles thinks he can do it, for the same reasons he thought his team could score a touchdown with 8 seconds left in a 2007 game against Auburn when a field goal would have won the game, why he went for fourth down five times against Florida, and why he called a half-dozen fake fields goals that included lateral passes from backup players.

Will this latest bold move work like some of the others? He checks plenty of boxes. Miles has the quirky, fun-loving personality to recruit to the Midwest (moms and dads love him as much as his players do). He’s a people person with championship rings who will rally a fan base and squeeze dollars out of donors. He’s a decision-maker who’s hired some strong assistants (look at his defensive coordinators alone at LSU: Dave Aranda, Kevin Steele, John Chavis, Bo Pelini).

 

There is a box left unmarked: the offense. Miles has preached since his firing that he plans to be more liberal offensively at his next stop, incorporating more modern spread principles into a scheme that bludgeoned teams on the ground in Baton Rouge. His teams often physically dominated less talented squads with a simple, basic offense, a freakishly speedy, stifling defense and a trick-heavy special teams unit. At Kansas, he’ll have no Leonard Fournette, no Derrius Guice, no Jamal Adams, no Eric Reid, no Glenn Dorsey, no Barkevious Mingo. He can no longer be the hammer. He’s the nail, an old, rusty nail, stuck in a rotting floorboard that needs fixing. He chose to do this. Kansas wasn’t his only suitor. Colorado showed interest days ago, well before the school fired Mike MacIntyre on Sunday.

 

At either place, Les would have had to change. His offensive coordinator hire is the most essential of his early decisions, and maybe he’s already got someone in mind. His relationship with former Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze is a strong one. Freeze is currently the offensive coordinator for the Arizona Hotshots of the Alliance of American Football, a startup professional league that begins play in February. Freeze makes sense. The Miles and Freeze family are close. The men like one another. Freeze, mired in scandal in Oxford, is maybe untouchable to some major programs — not to Kansas. The Jayhawks are going all in, resource-wise, to win games. They haven’t had a winning season in a decade and lost 36 of their last 38 Big 12 games. They’re paying Miles $2.775 million a year, $1 million than the previous coach, so why not plunk down a half-million or more for a proven offensive mind?

 
 

Les isn’t completely against opening up his offense. He did at Oklahoma State, turning a cellar-dweller into a yearly bowl squad by, yes, passing the football. The Cowboys were nearly a 50-50 run-pass split in Miles’ first two seasons. Two of his best seasons at LSU, in 2006-07, he passed 40-45 percent of the time. At OSU, he had Josh Fields, and at LSU, he had JaMarcus Russell and Matt Flynn. He’s played in the past to the skill and talent of his team. Late in his tenure in Baton Rouge, the quarterback position became a beleaguered spot, a few recruiting misses and a host of transfers taking its toll.

Problems at the position affected results, as you might imagine. LSU averaged about 170 yards passing a game over Miles’s final two seasons, lower than all but two Power 5 conference teams over that same stretch (Boston College and triple-option squad Georgia Tech). Miles was 12-10 in his last 22 games against Power 5 programs. His influence on the offense was substantial, especially when the problems began arising. He changed play-calls from offensive coordinator Cam Cameron or took complete control of play-calling, especially in crunch time of significant games. Will he be hands off if he hires Freeze or some other experienced offensive guru?

 

Everybody is rooting for it to happen, they’re all pulling for Les Miles because he’s Les Miles, the goofy, dad-like man who turns news conferences from serious to silly. Rooting doesn’t mean belief, and the belief among many is that the game’s passed Les by and he’s heading into a coaching graveyard in Lawrence. Guess what? He doesn’t care what you think, and he’s out to prove you wrong—the media and everyone else, not least of which are the decision-makers who fired him at LSU.

He’s a pissed off Les Miles and he’s cocksure about his new, damn strong team.

Edited by LTtxfan
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Wally Fairway

Wally Fairway 5,674

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I can't call it a great hire, because at 65 Lester isn't going to be in Lawrence all that long.
IMO - it is a sensationalized/media name hire. I think that if Miles can bring credibility and get the Jayhawks back on track then the real issue becomes who do they hire in 3-5 years when The Mad Hatter calls it quits. Seriously, he may retire before Snyder.

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Jhawk

Jhawk 1,075

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1 hour ago, Wally Fairway said:

I can't call it a great hire, because at 65 Lester isn't going to be in Lawrence all that long.
IMO - it is a sensationalized/media name hire. I think that if Miles can bring credibility and get the Jayhawks back on track then the real issue becomes who do they hire in 3-5 years when The Mad Hatter calls it quits. Seriously, he may retire before Snyder.

This is all known. The biggest issue is establishing a foundation right now. Nobody that has a future in coaching wants to come to Kansas and the best we did last time was a position coach. Les doesn’t have a future in coaching and he has the chops to “succeed” at KU. It’s the perfect marriage because success is .500 in 2-3 years. If he gets the roster right and he gets us one season at 7-5 then our job becomes one that a young up and coming coach would take. If he doesn’t, then we are where we are and not any worse. It really is a no risk hire and who knows what the reward could be. 

We can’t worry about the next hire right now because if we are in this same state in 5 years our next hire won’t matter. We’ll be sitting in Memphis’s shoes in the AAC or C-USA. 

Edited by Jhawk
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kevwun

kevwun 16,437

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The only way he will have any success is if he hires a good OC and gives them complete control of that side of the ball.  He hates the forward pass though, so the chances of that happening are very slim I think.  Most people will promise just about anything when millions of dollars are on the line.  It's a good name hire for Kansas, but he is a terrible fit for the Big XII.

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Valmy77

Valmy77 13,626

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Ok Les coached at Oklahoma State and beat up on Stoops a couple times during peak Stoops so I am sure he knows how to do a Big 12 track meet.

I am not sure I can recall a situation where Texas is playing a team who has already introduced their new head coach before. Bizarre.

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32,587

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5 minutes ago, kevwun said:

The only way he will have any success is if he hires a good OC and gives them complete control of that side of the ball.  He hates the forward pass though, so the chances of that happening are very slim I think.  Most people will promise just about anything when millions of dollars are on the line.  It's a good name hire for Kansas, but he is a terrible fit for the Big XII.

I don't think that's quite right.  He was 50/50 at OSU.  What Les had issues with, seemingly, was the recruitment and development of QB's while at LSU.  

 

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kevwun

kevwun 16,437

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Just now, Francisco 2.0 said:

I don't think that's quite right.  He was 50/50 at OSU.  What Les had issues with, seemingly, was the recruitment and development of QB's while at LSU.  

 

His OC was Mike Gundy.  If he finds another Mike Gundy and lets him do his thing, it will work out.

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DejaVu

DejaVu 39

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On 11/17/2018 at 7:55 AM, Hank Chinaski said:

Gundy also went 4-7 his first year, then 7-6, 7-6, 9-4. So in first 4 years at OSU, Miles was 28-21 and Gundy was 27-23.

Gundy had to throw so many of the players that Miles brought in off the team that he (Gundy) was essentially starting from scratch. 

Prentiss Elliott was a gang member, FFS. 

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Hamttx

Hamttx 427

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Well, I laughed at Herm thinking that was a a disaster waiting to happen. And though the jury is still out. Knocking off Michigan State was a bigger win then I ever thought he would get.

So I guess I will hold off on Les until he is in place and see what happens. Kansas has been so bad, for so long. It just seems like the task is impossible and no one can win there.

 

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ButtFumble

ButtFumble 5,287

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Kansas FOOTBALL has a head coach that has won a  legit national championship in recent history......that in and of itself is probably something most people never thought they would say or hear

it is stupid to think he is not going to try and adjust.....he tried at LSU, but it is not that simple to just make over an offense in a season or even two especially when you have recruited to a specific one and more so when other teams are doing the same and then you add in the fans (and administration) publicly shitting on you for not getting it done immediately

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Jkwellborn

Jkwellborn 7,035

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Kansas FOOTBALL has a head coach that has won a  legit national championship in recent history......that in and of itself is probably something most people never thought they would say or hear
it is stupid to think he is not going to try and adjust.....he tried at LSU, but it is not that simple to just make over an offense in a season or even two especially when you have recruited to a specific one and more so when other teams are doing the same and then you add in the fans (and administration) publicly shitting on you for not getting it done immediately

He tried about like like Shawn Watson tried.
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Pimphand

Pimphand 6,369

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On 11/19/2018 at 7:33 AM, LTtxfan said:

Did Kansas Make the Right Hire? Les Miles Doesn’t Care What You Think

I mean who gives a shit if they did or not it's Kansas.  As gambles go I think this is a good one for them.  That Les Miles gave up 5 million from LSU to take this job is a head scratcher but that has always been his appeal is doing braindead shit that makes no sense.

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