Les-talk: Broken toes, Cuba and Alton Sterling

Published 8:33 am Friday, July 15, 2016

HOOVER, Ala. — You know things are serious when Les Miles has to turn somber before going full pantomime in delivering the annual madcap Miles Family Vacation update to SEC Media Days.

Oh, the LSU coach would get to it.

The media flock would soon enough learn how the two eldest in the brood could dupe Dad into thinking he was going to a lake near Austin, Texas, while visiting his daughter, only to be shanghaied and end up in Cleveland — “There is a lake there!” — where they’d arranged courtside seats to watch LeBron James win Game 6 of the NBA Playoffs.

“I had no idea,” he said. “And I am a ticket.”

Or maybe he meant he had a ticket, a really good ticket.

But the longtime Cavaliers fan also was kind enough to share Uncle Les’ Parenting Tip No. 303: “If you’re a parent or wannabe parent, you never catch a son pitcher or a female fast-pitch softball pitcher while wearing flip-flops.”

Miles, wearing same, evidently tried to sit on an ordinary can to ease the strain of doing his paternal hind-catching duty. The way one’s toes stick out, he cautioned, is an obvious position to be hit by a low pitch.

“So I broke two toes in my right foot while catching her.”

John Candy would play him if the movie could have been made before his death.

But somehow — details were sketchy and spoken in classic Les-isms — the great flip-flop mishap was how Miles eventually ended up in Cuba for a quick, solo visit that remarkably caused no international incidents.

He did show up Thursday, however, with startling news from his trip to Castro Land.

“Cuba is a communist country,” he informed the media, which promised to relay the information to the CIA.

So Miles delivered the goods as expected.

He introduced a new Les-phrase to the language while asking a reporter to repeat a question.

“If you’d give me a little more space between your words, it would help me a little bit, OK?”

Most everybody got a good chuckle out of it.

But, before that, he turned serious and even took a stab at the Queen’s English while describing the disturbing events back home, the aftermath of the Alton Sterling shooting that has Baton Rouge on edge.

He seemed to be fighting within himself about what he and his team could do to make it all better.

He was nothing if not proactive.

When he first learned of the police shooting, he called a staff meeting.

“It was not about our roles as coaches or staff but more or less who we were as people,” he said. “I wanted to listen. I felt like it improved our communications.”

Two meetings with the team’s leadership council followed. Then a full team meeting, which eventually broke into position groups.

But football wasn’t mentioned.

“We brushed the surface of the issues,” he said. “I don’t know that we got the depth that we needed.”

Miles knows how it works in the culture of a football team — “people buy in … great energy, they have to work hard, do their job. When they do that, alongside a team effort, they’re embraced as a team. They’re productive, and the team is significant. You can have a very, very talented team, but you need everybody.”

Whether that formula translates into helping society, he can’t be for certain.

“I help my guys in some way process emotion,” he said. “I don’t know that I’ve done a very good job. I don’t know if I’ve personally processed the emotion that I see when our country is displayed as it is.”

But he’s trying — at least he’s not ignoring it.

“What I’d like to do is have them, our guys, have a platform where they could affect change,” Miles said.

Heisman candidate and unquestioned team leader Leonard Fournette was on social media in the aftermath of the shooting wearing a t-shirt in support of Sterling.

Miles is all for it.

Fournette said Thursday he couldn’t tell you much about what is going on in the streets of Baton Rouge these days.

“I stay inside except when I’m at practice,” he said.

But he knows what he and his teammates can do to bring the city and state closer together.

Just win, baby.

“Football is a Louisiana thing,” he said. “It always brings people together.”

It’s been done before.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when the LSU campus was the nation’s largest triage center, Tiger players were assisting with the relief efforts. They finally met as a team and decided that the best thing they could do for the psyche of the state was go win some football games.

“I just want to be part of whatever change can be positive,” Miles said.