SEC TV risks Les-speak to explain game

Published 6:00 pm Friday, August 11, 2017

<p class="p1">The following involves Leslie Edwin Miles, so it promises to be fuzzy, confusing and subject to multiple interpretations.</p><p class="p1">But it’s still Les Miles so it should be fun, possibly dangerous.</p><p class="p1">All I’m saying is hang on to your mad hats.</p><p class="p1">This is going to be a trip.</p><p class="p1">It all started Wednesday when Uncle Les reacquainted himself with Twitter, although asking him to explain himself in 140 characters (or less) makes the infamous end-of-game clock tussles look like precision-style brain surgery.</p><p class="p1">Best anybody could tell, however, Miles was trying to say that he would be back in football this fall, probably college, not in a coaching capacity apparently, but possibly involved with some form or fashion of the media.</p><p class="p1">Presumably the proper authorities have been alerted.</p><p class="p1">Television is the odds-on favorite.</p><p class="p1">The “want” was there.</p><p class="p1">When Miles dropped his Twitter bombshell — “I’ll be covering some of my favorite teams this fall” — The Advocate of Baton Rouge put its best investigative reporter hot on the case.</p><p class="p1">It definitely had the potential to be false news, if not an out-and-out hack of a Twitter hoax.</p><p class="p1">But, lest reporter Ross Dellenger had any doubts that he actually had the genuine Miles on the phone, this quote cleared it up — it could only have come from the mouth the Mad Hatter:</p><p class="p1">“Certainly the situations and adjectives that describe college football are going to be something I’m easily accustomed to.”</p><p class="p1">Yes. That’s definitely Les. I’d know that brain twister anywhere. I suddenly have a furrowed brow unlike anything I’ve felt in almost a year.</p><p class="p1">Miles, though, was somewhat vague — imagine that — telling The Advocate that he was exploring several options as an analyst while declining to name a network. He suggested it might be several outlets.</p><p class="p1">“I’m going to be in media and in a number of different places,” he said, “I’m going to have a blast.”</p><p class="p1">On Thursday the SEC Network maybe sort of kind of almost cleared it up. It announced that Miles will serve as a guest analyst for the season-opening game between Florida and Michigan in Arlington, Texas, on Sept. 2. The SEC Network will also do its weekly “SEC Nation” show from there that morning, and Miles is expected to chime in on it too.</p><p class="p1">So the Michigan Man’s Michigan Man will get to finally get see the old alma mater play.</p><p class="p1">He has even threatened to call an LSU game, in which case he said, “I’m going to root for every guy I recruited. That’s everybody, minus a few linebackers. I’d be honest and fair in evaluation, but I’d also be purposefully enjoying watching those Tigers.”</p><p class="p1">But will he get to do an Ar-KAN-sas game?</p><p class="p1">Wherever Miles is, it surely will be interesting.</p><p class="p1">“I’ll be able to tell you after the first quarter what thoughts are going through the coach’s mind,” Miles said.</p><p class="p1">Really?</p><p class="p1">There can’t be another coaching mind in the world that works the way that one does. And that was often a good thing.</p><p class="p1">The only fear now is that the viewing nation may overdose on him.</p><p class="p1">Right now Vegas has Miles as a solid 61⁄2-point favorite over the English language, with which he has famously tangled — and lost — on many occasions, often with broken furniture as the bloodshed spilled into the streets.</p><p class="p1">The spoken word doesn’t have a chance.</p><p class="p1">Innocent grammar teachers will be cowering in the corner, doing the duck and cover out of harm’s way.</p><p class="p1">But “Have a great day!” anyway.</p><p class="p1">We’ve seen and heard this before.</p><p class="p1">Shoot, I spent 11 years of my life trying to figure out what he was saying — translating him was a passion similar to chasing unicorns — and I came out the other side exhausted, with my tail between my legs and waving the white flag.</p><p class="p1">If Miles didn’t have a verb locked in a full-nelson, he was shadowboxing with a dangling participle or body slamming an adverb.</p><p class="p1">It wasn’t enough to just get snippets -— “You kiss ‘em on the lips — if you’re a girl” — now he’ll be nonstop dumbfounding fans for the entire game.</p><p class="p1">I imagine entire neighborhoods finally fleeing their TVs, running from their homes, pulling out hair, rolling in lawns and desperately screaming: “What is he trying to say?”</p><p class="p1">And good luck with that.</p><p class="p1">Still, this is good news.</p><p class="p1">It was time for Miles to get off LSU’s sideline — it was a shame, but when he was stubborn enough not to change that Model-T offense after he’d been warned with an aborted firing experience nine months earlier, it was time.</p><p class="p1">But face it, college football isn’t as much fun without him.</p><p class="p1">Televised football may now be better with him or it may be worse.</p><p class="p1">But it is certainly going to be different.</p><p class="p1">Probably frustratingly so … in a delightful kind of way.</p><p class="p1">Or something like that.</p><p class="p3"><strong>Scooter Hobbs</strong> covers LSU athletics. Email him at shobbs@americanpress.com</p>