O brother, where art thou?

Published 7:52 am Wednesday, August 17, 2016

As a first responder, well, Les Miles is feeling pretty inadequate right now.

For instance, LSU Sports Information Director Michael Bonnette (a Lake Charles native whose brother Matt followed in their father’s footsteps to take the same job at McNeese State) found a pretty heroic way to spend the harrowing, floody Sunday in Baton Rouge.

He and some other athletic department employees commandeered a small boat in their neighborhood and became part of the volunteer Cajun Navy that has become so integral to rescue efforts in flooded Baton Rouge.

Their original mission was to set sail down flooded streets toward the home of retired LSU radio announcer Jim Hawthorne, who along with his wife hadn’t been heard from in more than 24 hours.

It turned out Hawthorne, unfriendly with internet staples like email and with a dead cell phone, was surrounded by water in his home, but otherwise fine when some others in a boat happened by and got him and his wife to safety before Bonnette’s Navy arrived.

But Bonnette and his crew mates found some others to rescue en route to Hawthorne’s place, so it was a productive trip.

Miles?

“What a great brother I’ve been,” he said sarcastically Tuesday.

One of Miles’ two brothers lives in Gonzales and was briefly affected by flooding.

“He texted me on my work number,” Miles recalled. “He said ‘Come pick me up.’”

One problem. That cell phone of Miles’, like many in Baton Rouge, was temporarily out of commission.

“I’m without it for about a day and half,” Miles explained.

By the time he got to read the original text message from his brother, it had already long been followed up by another one two hours later:

“I’m good. Thanks anyway,” the follow-up read.

“’Course, I never got those messages,” Miles said. “So I’m a bad brother.”

He’ll be forgiven.

If we know nothing else about Uncle Les, it’s that he functions fine, perhaps at his best, in full crisis mode with distractions flying this way and that.

Only last month he was a reassuring, believable voice during the racial tension that culminated in the shooting deaths of three policemen.

Baton Rouge is in chaos right now due to extreme widespread flooding.

But LSU football workouts, blessed with a state-of-the-art indoor facility, hasn’t missed a beat, sometimes sending high-riding vehicles to pick up stranded players, but nevertheless practicing on through the crisis. No doubt with added emphasis on completing forward passes.

It may seem trivial with so much real-life suffering in the immediate neighborhood, but Miles knows better.

“This football team has to have to success,” Miles said. “That’s fundamental. It becomes magnified when you have perimeter issues.”

Upon his introduction to Louisiana — Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — his first game was postponed and the next was transplanted at the last moment from Baton Rouge to Arizona.

But, even by candlelight and generator-powered TVs, most of the state found a way to be watching when the Tigers mounted a comeback to beat Arizona State.

It finally brought some normalcy to the state … and then Hurricane Rita barged in and postponed on the eventual home opener.

But the show, too important to too many in the state, had to go on. Given the unimagined distractions — LSU practiced under the constant woomp, woomp, woomp of helicopters delivering broken bodies to a triage center at the Maravich Assembly Center — winning the SEC West that year might have been Miles’ most impressive coaching accomplishment.

“Making sure this team is ready is my first charge and responsibility,” Miles said Tuesday. “When everybody talks gloom and doom, it doesn’t help anybody.

“You have to address what we’re doing, how important what we’re doing is, really give us direction as opposed to watching (the bad news on) TV.”

As LSU players learned during the Katrina-Rita chaos, the best thing they can do for everybody’s wounded spirits is win football games.

Oh, Miles said, the players still plan to continue a tradition of helping some incoming freshmen move into dorms this week and a few might visit the refugee shelter set up in the LSU Field House.

“Problem is, we coaches keep them busy until about 10 o’clock at night,” Miles said. “That’s kind of tough to go say hello to anybody.”

In a sign in the team meeting room, just above the list of the year’s goals, it spells out who they’re playing for.

Louisiana

Team

Self

“Self below team, but team below Louisiana,” Miles explained it.

But he walks a fine line.

“Our community has come through some tough times,” Miles said of the last two months. “This is a great way for the community to come together.

“I don’t know if it’s fair to put that on my team. Just becoming a great team and developing is something that first they have to take on.

“If they take on the responsibility other teams here have … that’s who we play for. It will be interesting to see how those things transpire.”

History tells us Miles will get it done.

l

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com

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