Spring Meetings: Les Miles’ interview with SEC TV

In his chat with the SEC’s Buzz Baker, Les Miles – wearing a rather loud yellow shirt – and not with all his children (they are on camp, apparently!) – had some soundbytes.

Sorry if the quotes aren’t exact:

The season: We played three 2nd ranked teams and beat them all. We played 13 great teams, and the one we didn’t so well in was the National Championship game, unfortunately. Our team understands they were in the SEC West and now they have a Championship banner that no-one else hangs.

Motivation for the future?: They are excited with playing and they are looking forward to it.

The team for 2012: Good on defense, and the offense will be much better. I like the way that Zach Mettenberger has approached the Spring. I like our running game and offensive line, too. And our special teams are all back. Our return games’s back.

Play-Off: Everyone wants some style of play-off. The college football fans want four more games, but we have to include the bowl system. I don’t believe that you can reasonably have a system without those factors. And I think that including the best-ranked and highest-ranked teams is more important than a conference championship winner. The Conference Champion denotes a geographic bias. But teams are NOT equal and you have to get a team into that play-off even if it has one loss. If a conference non-champions which has one loss is on the outside looking in that would be miserable.

Scheduling [Upon being asked that it would be 6-1-1 system]: I want to understand the format more. There should be more emphasis put on the divisional rivals. You can’t decide the fate of one division based on one match between the West and East. You have to decide it by match-ups within the division [ie. West vs West// East vs East].

Missouri: Plays great defence, and has a quality coach in Pinkel and had a quality spread offence.

Texas A&M: Another Texas team, which is quality and great competition.