Orgeron hopes eight is enough to keep LSU job
Published 6:50 am Friday, September 30, 2016
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Ed Orgeron’s first go-round at LSU — as a player recruited from way back down in the dim part of the bayou — did not go well, or at least it did not last long.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“Less than two weeks,” he remembered. “I got homesick — and Baton Rouge was a far place from LaRose. I left after two weeks.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I regretted it ever since. The next day my daddy put me on the side of the road on a construction job … kind of the worst day of my life.”</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Suddenly college, even with football’s grueling two-a-days, didn’t seem so bad. Orgeron would eventually land at Northwestern State, where he was reunited with South Lafourche High teammate Bobby Hebert, and got through college mostly without incident and then headfirst into coaching.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But he never forgot about those wasted two weeks, of which he was often reminded.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I’d pass by Tiger Stadium,” he recalled, “and I’d wonder what it would have been like. I said to myself, ‘One day I will be back and the second time is going to be better for me.’”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So far, so good. Les Miles is gone and, next thing you know … “Growing up in south Louisiana, being the head coach at LSU is a dream.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There’s a catch, of course. He didn’t use the modifier “interim” in the heartwarming dream-come-true tale (never mind he crawled right up out the bayou in the process) but it might as well be written in blinking neon.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Orgeron makes no secret that it’s his ultimate goal to have “interim” removed: “I understand the expectations at LSU. And I fully, fully intend to meet those expectations.”</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So whether the LSU power brokers do or not, Orgeron clearly views the next eight games as the audition of a lifetime.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Athletic Director Joe Alleva broke his puzzling silence on a Baton Rouge radio show Thursday to say, “We’ll see how it goes. We have eight games left. He has a great opportunity to show what he can do and turn this ship around.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Lip service or not, it’s an interesting dilemma for the search committee — and, according to Alleva, “I am the search.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Nickname: Ba Ba (pronounced “Bay-Bay,” and kind of a Jr.; his papa was also called Ba Ba — and his momma: Co Co).</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s full-blooded. There’s probably a little muskrat cousin somewhere.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If nothing else, the next eight weeks should be fun.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">One of the questioners on Orgeron’s first stab at Miles’ former call-in radio show Wednesday night was speaking to him in French.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Another said Orgeron was the first LSU coach “that doesn’t have an accent.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Answered Ba Ba, from deep in the crusty gravel of his throat: “This is the first place I’ve coached where they don’t think I have an accent.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Another invited him over for some crawfish ?touff?e.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I eat it for breakfast,” Ba Ba replied.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Is this not perfect.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If Hollywood ever makes another movie about LSU football, they’re going to put an Orgeron clone in the title role anyway.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He’s straight out of central casting for the cinema’s vision of Louisiana, which sees LSU as being in the middle of a dark swamp somewhere, accessible only by pirogue and inhabited by people who don’t speak English and most certainly do eat rodents for lunch.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This, of course, isn’t a movie.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU will rightfully focus on the A-list names initially, say, heartthrob-of-the-moment Tom Herman at Houston or the obligatory run at Jimbo Fisher at Florida State (and how’d that turn out last year?).</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Orgeron has been down this road before. He got rave reviews for his salvage work with Southern Cal’s 2013 team, taking over after Lane Kiffin was fired five games in and finishing 6-2 down the stretch.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He had the support of the players to get the interim asterisk pried off then, but Southern Cal eventually looked elsewhere.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">One of the problems, it was rumored, was that the high-brows at Southern California were worried that “You couldn’t bring Orgeron into the Belaire Country Club.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Fred’s Lounge in Mamou probably isn’t so particular.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s still a decided long shot.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But Orgeron is already laying some groundwork for a possible groundswell movement.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He’s inviting former players to come see practice, even to walk down Victory Hill with the current players on the way to Tiger Stadium (they like that kind of attention).</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He’s sucked up to the media by loosening up the Kremlin-like (lack of) access to the program.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mainly, he’s threatening to unleash an offense born in this century.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">None of it matters if he doesn’t win.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But what if he does?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">I doubt 6-2 would do it, even though it would be somewhat of a miracle with the heavy lifting in LSU’s SEC schedule still over the horizon.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Complicating matters, presumably Alleva will be doing the legwork for a replacement while the season plays out. Why else would you fire Miles four games in if not to get a head start on the bidding wars?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But, regardless of what Alleva turns up, Orgeron at 7-1 would really make it hard for them to tell him no, let alone if he runs the blasted table.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Meantime, enjoy the Ba Ba show. It’s almost hard not to pull for him.</span>
