The Ballad of Les Miles
By Kyle Kensing
The moniker Mad Hatter is oh-so befitting Les Miles. There’s a lot of peculiarities that define the LSU head coach: grass eating; regular clock management gaffes; “Have a great day.”
There’s another characteristic that separates Miles from most college football coaches — a national championship.
Miles turned around an Oklahoma State program that had been the picture of futility for most of the post-Barry Sanders era. His 4-7 campaign in Stillwater during 2001 remains the sole losing record of his career. Since succeeding Nick Saban in Baton Rouge after the 2004 season, he’s amassed a 62-17 mark and gone 5-1 in bowl games including a 4-0 run.
Boasting a 70.3 career winning percentage as well as the ultimate determiner of a coach’s value would seemingly be enough to earn Miles more reverence, yet he’s regularly the target of derision. Fans have routinely called for Miles’ job. It’s a rite of autumn as predictable as the leaves changing and cable networks airing crappy slasher movies.
When Fire Les Miles threads crop up all over LSU message boards any time the Tigers have a near-miss or near-hit, it’s understandable the coach would chide such forums as he did at today’s SEC Media Day.
But, as is the case with most tales, this one has two distinct sides. A parallel drawn between Miles’ early success is to that of Larry Coker. While at Miami, the current UT-San Antonio coach presided over perhaps the most talented roster in college football history. The Hurricanes powered their way to the 2001 national championship, and the next season was a Willis McGahee injury and botched pass interference call away from a repeat.
A 24-1 run would seemingly buy a coach all the time in the world, the only problem was that Coker won with the talent Butch Davis had assembled. The most glaring flaw with the otherwise outstanding 30-For-30 documentary was focusing more on Davis’ record as Miami’s head coach, and less on his setting the table for a run of dominance, but that’s a topic for a future blog. More on topic, Coker was the beneficiary of the work Davis put in, and many have attributed Miles’ own title to Saban.
Miles has also come under scrutiny for oversigning, a recruiting tactic unfortunately entrenched in big time football that has recently come under fire. Chris Garrett left LSU a year ago and landed at FCS Southland Conference member Northwestern State. Garrett was very candid about the circumstances surrounding his departure, pinning it exclusively on Miles and his staff.
Miles’ recruiting practices are under further scrutiny, thanks to Will Lyles. His claims that videos sent to Miles’ staff were worthless come just days after the Tigers were hit with NCAA sanctions.
So how does Miles deal with Lyles claims? The same way he has every other bit of criticism sent his way. Miles refuted Lyles’ claims, pointing out the Tigers’ acquisition of quarterback Zach Mettenberger. He continues marching to the beat of his drum, an beat not necessarily rhythmic to the rest of us. Oftentimes listening to Miles talk about late game strategies, personnel moves or addressing critics, I full expect him to ask, “You mad?”
As for his own madness, there’s a method. Best believe, there’s a method. And this season, it could result in a second national championship, elevating the often maligned Miles to a rarefied air only a very elite class of coaches can claim.
Should the Tigers play for a national championship in their own backyard, the same place they won their last title in the New Orleans Superdome, it will be the culmination of a strange story.
The play of LSU’s offense has remained a source of frustration for Tiger faithful under Miles. Consistency at quarterback has been virtually non-existent. The best LSU quarterback of the last five seasons played his prime football at Jacksonville State. When Randy Edsall plucked away offensive Gary Crowton to Maryland, Miles had an opportunity to completely change the direction of LSU’s offense.
SO what did he do? He brought on Steve Kragthorpe, a coach more synonymous with the abrupt and profound derailing of a national championship contender to bowl-less status. Kragthorpe’s Louisville offenses took a nosedive in virtually every category from 2006 to 2009, his final season as the Cardinals’ head coach.
Kragthorpe is now entrusted with the development of a quarterback, Jordan Jefferson, who has been folly prone. A marriage made in BCS bliss? Certainly not on the surface.
But Miles has never operated on what works on the surface, on paper. Unpredictability has followed LSU everywhere its gone, and strange times are a-brewing. The upcoming season has an air of uncertainty to it unseen since summer of 2007. There are frontrunners pundits like to play in New Orleans for all the…Sugar? Yet never has preseason punditry felt more hollow.
Strange times call for strange measures.