Les Miles and Ole Miss Football: Some say no, but I say go, Les, go

With Ole Miss football now looking for a new head coach they’d be fools to pass up on former LSU head man Les Miles. Here are five reasons why.

More: Where will Hugh Freeze end up next? 5 schools that could hire the former Ole Miss coach

Matt Luke has been announced as the interim coach for the 2017 Ole Miss football team. The summer is getting closer and closer to fall and there aren’t many available coaches left to choose from. Conventional wisdom is that the Rebels will ride Luke through the season, lick their wounds, and find “their guy” in the offseason.

Why wait when the best option is still out there? Ole Miss needs to hurry up and hire Les Miles. Word on the street is there might be a bit of smoke near that fire.

Here are five reasons why Miles to Oxford is a match made in heaven.

Poetic justice

Let’s take a trip back in time. It’s 2005 and Les Miles was just hired at LSU. That very same year Ole Miss hired a new coach as well. The man of choice? Ed Orgeron.

We all know how the story goes from there. Coach O burns out quickly and loudly while Miles flourishes. Coach O was 10-25 after three seasons with the Rebels before being let go following the 2007 season. That was the same year that Miles won a National Championship at LSU. Now fast forward a decade into present day. Ole Miss needs a head coach whereas LSU just hired Coach O this very offseason. You can’t make this stuff up.

I can think of nothing sweet than Miles having the opportunity to stick it to LSU. The university did so much for him, but there’s always that unsettling feeling in your gut when you meet a former employer that showed you the door.

Coach O at LSU and now Les Miles at Ole Miss. If you’re a betting man, and any Tigers reading this will have a casino not too far away, you’ve got to like Miles’ chances of outperforming Orgeron. Ole Miss isn’t going to hire Miles to spite LSU, but that wouldn’t be a bad part of the package if they did decide to hire him after all.

Les is your bridge coach

Nobody wants to follow in the footsteps of what just happened in Oxford. The NCAA investigation is still under way and the team is already under a self-imposed bowl ban. Recruits are decommitting and there doesn’t seem to be a bright ray of sunshine at the end of the tunnel. Ole Miss doesn’t need a two decade fixture, they need a bridge man.

Les Miles is that guy. He’s 63 years old. Interestingly enough, the last Power-5 program to hire a coach older than Miles is now was Kansas State, who brought back Bill Snyder at 69. The catch: Snyder had already been at coach in Manhattan once before. When he does decide to hang it up, he’ll go down as a legend that put Kansas State football on the map.

Miles has no rich history tying him to the state of Mississippi, quite the opposite actually after he beat the Rebels so many times. However, Miles is not going to coach forever. He strikes me more as the kind of guy looking for an opportunity in the right place at the right time. He knows the SEC and has all the recruiting connections necessary to rebuild Ole Miss.

It’s going to be hard to convince one of the hot, young assistants to make Oxford their next step in their careers. But selling Miles, an SEC guy who’s already been there and done that, should be much easier. Sign Miles to a three year deal. If things are still looking good give him another few years til you find your guy,

There isn’t a better recruiter available

Les Miles took over the LSU football program in 2005. The Tigers weren’t exactly slumming it with Nick Saban at the helm previously, but the transition to Miles didn’t dampen the recruiting successes. Saban and Miles have been No. 1 and No. 2 in the SEC recruiting race for over a decade. Saban isn’t leaving his post, but Miles is a free agent.

The Tigers fell outside of the top 10 in the national recruiting rankings (per 247 sports) just twice in Miles’ 13 year tenure at LSU. In those instances they finished 11th (2008) and 14th (2012). His “down year” was a 14th overall finish, and that included linebacker Kwon Alexander, so it’s not like Miles whiffed on a class.

When you hold up the Rebels to that standard you might as well laugh. Here are the Rebels’ national rankings since 2013, the year after Hugh Freeze took over the program: 8, 15, 17, 5, 30. The current class, 2018, is being pegged by 247 Sports as the No. 63 class in the country.

The legitimacy of those recruits is certainly in question. But even if you put full faith and confidence that Freeze was honorable and honest in all his recruiting processes, the data speaks for itself. You don’t have to get into morality, just look at the numbers. Miles’ worst recruiting class in a decade was 14th. I didn’t even mention the string of top five (and top two) finishes he had during that time period. Freeze had two good years, Miles has been doing this for a much longer time.

If you’re ever going to win again in Oxford, let alone win big, you need talent. Miles might not have the football or clock management IQ of some of college football’s elite minds, but he can get good players to campus. In the long run, you can’t win without talent.

He’s the biggest name that Ole Miss can get

Here’s the situation that Ole Miss football has found themselves in. Their most recent head coach resigned because of personal impropriety. A week before he resigned a previous head coach sued him before a full day of press conferences and interviews. Sounds kind of like a bad movie gone horribly wrong. That media firestorm comes right in the middle of an NCAA investigation.

What exactly about that would intrigue any established coach? Ole Miss has little to offer right now. And they have to play in the same conference as Nick Saban. Sheesh.

As soon as they news broke every possible name under the sun was thrown out by the Twittersphere. It would take a long time to debunk every option, but it’s worth crossing out a few of the bigger names right off the bat.

Related Story: 5 potential replacements for Hugh Freeze at Ole Miss

1. Bob Stoops

You can believe what you want about the degree of permanency of Stoops’ retirement. After all, Urban Meyer was done with football and here he is now at Ohio State. But notice where Meyer made his return. The Buckeyes are one of college football’s greatest programs of all time. If Stoops does come back, he’s not picking Ole Miss.

2. Art Briles

Briles’ name will probably be an immediate no for at least every Power-5 program in the country. What’s there to gain from hiring a guy who left his previous employer for dishonesty and coverups – the same problems of which Freeze was accused of at Ole Miss.

3. Chip Kelly

Chip Kelly has been rumored to be the favorite for every college coaching job that’s come open since he made an attempt at the NFL. Most believe that Kelly isn’t done with college football, but for similar reasons as Stoops’, why would he ever decide to make his comeback in Oxford? He wouldn’t. There will be better jobs available when he does decide to come back.

Les is a proven option

114. That’s the number of games that Les Miles won at LSU before he was fired in 2016. He coached in 148 games. That’s a wining percentage of .770.

And he did all that in what was the toughest division in football at the time. Miles coached in the SEC West at its peak. Between 2006 and 2012 the SEC won seven consecutive national titles. That included three by Alabama, one by Auburn and one by Miles himself.

Sidebar: how many coaches could Ole Miss hire tomorrow that have National Champion written on their resume. Zero. None. Nada. Take the hint Rebels, this is your guy. Now, back to the SEC as a whole.

There may not have been a more difficult division to win in the history of college football. Dan Mullen, Bobby Petrino and Saban. Those are high-caliber coaches and Miles proved that he can hang with the best.

The current iteration of the SEC West is not nearly as competitive as it was during Miles’ hayday. Every single school in the entire conference finished with four or more losses last season, excluding of course, Alabama. It’s an anecdote that’s been overused, but it’s worth pointing out. The SEC was truly that dominant as recently as five years ago, and Miles was able to weather the storm and come out the other side with a National Title in 2007.

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National Champions don’t grow on trees. Ole Miss is in need of a winner right now. Someone that can convince a shattered program that it can be better. That takes confidence, charisma proven recruiting and a bit of luck. I’d trust no one else other than the Mad Hatter himself to roll the dice. Who knows. It just might work.