Firing Les Miles would be stupid, LSU
Listen, I’m not a LSU fan but I AM an unabashed Les Miles fan.
I love Les Miles because he’s not boring. His clock management is something of legend. His way of leading his team out by holding them back might be one of the most underrated things in sports. I love the way he claps his hands. No other coach has offered to kiss his players on the mouth. He’s fun in press conferences, and seems to be a real opposite to most college football coaches, who are more vanilla than a McDonald’s shake.
I have problems with Les Miles off-the-field. Les Miles kept Jeremy Hill when Jeremy Hill should have been thrown out of LSU. He can’t seem to control his players from fighting or smoking weed. It’s as though he really does have a laissez-faire attitude to bad kids doing bad things.
I have problems with Les Miles on the field, too. He’s a fabulous recruiter….but his teams seem to rarely hit their potential. Is it because so much of that talent goes to the NFL every year, or is it because he and his co-ordinators are dreadful? I have problems that despite their talent, LSU is almost always an afterthought when it comes to winning at SEC title (You can say that they weren’t this year, but they hadn’t played the back-end of their schedule and the committee royally screwed up by having them so high so early). And while I have less problems with the play-calling, I also have problems with the execution. The LSU offensive line is awful, and LSU’s defensive line can’t seem to tackle. And LSU hasn’t had a good quarterback since JaMarcus Russell. His Cam Cameron hire at offensive co-ordinator and his defensive co-ordinator hire of Kevin Steele have been poor to say the least.
But let’s get this straight. Despite his foibles, here’s some facts that you can’t take away from The Mad Hatter in Baton Rouge.
- He knows how to win. Since he arrived in 2005, Les Miles has had SEVEN double-digit win seasons. He’s won a National Championship and played in another. And won two out of three of the SEC Championship Games he’s been in.
- His players love him. That’s a good thing.
- He gets his players into the NFL. 40 of them are on active rosters, so far.
- He knows how to recruit. I’ve mentioned that before and want to do that again.
- He’s going to be very expensive. You fire Les Miles, he walks off with a $15m buyout. LSU claims it has the money, but this could cost the school $15-30m to get another coach? And how many coaches would really want to come into a school with that high pressure? Anyone really think Jimbo Fisher would walk from Florida State, where he’s got a pretty good thing going?
If LSU fires Les Miles, it could trainwreck the future for the Tigers. How many high school players do you think are out there, recruited by Les Miles, falling in love with his joie de vivre, who are now going “Actually, I’ll go play for Alabama or Auburn or Ole Miss if they fire Les Miles”. I would say 70% of the players. And of the good ones? Possibly even 90%.
Because LSU fans and its Board of Regents are so short-sighted, they won’t see it that way. They don’t like losing three games in a row (it could well be four after Thanksgiving!). Do any of them realise that before Les Miles era, LSU only had FIVE 10+ win years?
So what’s my alternative? Fire Cameron and Steele. One can’t teach his team to play offense and the other can’t teach his team to tackle. Get some good co-ordinators, and keep Miles. Give him another chance.