Miles made right call for his hometown

Published 7:01 am Tuesday, July 19, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Les Miles was supposed to fly to ESPN’s sprawling headquarters in Connecticut Monday.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The LSU coach, joining others of his brood from the SEC, was to be led through the worldwide leader’s “car wash,” basically going through an media assembly line to be poked and prodded about the Tigers’ upcoming season on almost all of the network’s various platforms.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Why ESPN needs to gather all of the SEC coaches on its home turf less than a week after the network had private audiences in its own room with all of them at SEC Media Days is anybody’s guess.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Probably because it can.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Who knows.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But it’s not the kind of thing a coach dares to skip.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Still, Miles sent his regrets at the last minute Sunday night.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He wasn’t going to Bristol, Conn., on Monday.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Everybody understood.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU’s football season will eventually get here.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But Monday wasn’t the day to be out on the carnival tour promoting and hyping it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It wouldn’t have been a good look for him or his LSU program.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Not with Baton Rouge simmering just one day into the wake of the killings of three law enforcement officers gunned down in cold blood on one of the city’s main thoroughfares.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It was the right call for Miles to skip football talk just this once.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It wasn’t the time to speculate on Leonard Fournette’s Heisman possibilities.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">ESPN did electronically drop into Baton Rouge for a live interview with Miles on its 5 p.m. Sports Center.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The quarterback situation didn’t come up as Miles explained his absence from ESPN’s mothership.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I wanted to be around my players today,” Miles told the network, adding that he knew slain officer Montrell Jackson personally. “Several (LSU players) have law enforcement fathers. I wanted to see them.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“It also put me in a position where I can come be a part of whatever issues the police department is having.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The turmoil in Baton Rouge was already a hot topic last week at Miles’ SEC Media Days appearance. It was before Sunday’s triple tragedy, but the tension from the Alton Sterling shooting was very much in his thoughts.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Even then, though doing his duty, Miles’ heart didn’t seem much into football talk.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If anything, he seemed frustrated that he couldn’t do more, at one point admitting, “I help my guys … 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.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He did talk about how he was proactive from the start of this mess. The moment he heard of the Sterling killing, he met first with team leaders, then the whole team to let them air their thoughts immediately after the Sterling killing. They eventually broke off into position groups, but football wasn’t a topic of those discussions.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">His players have more influence perhaps than youngsters of that age should.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But, while he said he wants them focusing on their academics and responsibilities to the team first, he also wants them to use their celebrity and their platform for good.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“With free time … maybe go read at a school … maybe there’s a youth football team in the neighborhood that needs a speaker,” he said.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Sunday’s killings were another punch in the gut.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“My heart hurts for Baton Rouge and what’s happened in our community over the past couple of weeks,” Miles said in a statement the school released. “My thoughts and prayers are with the families of those officers who lost their lives or were injured today in what was a senseless act. I continue to pray for peace, compassion and civility as our city mourns during this extremely sad time for Baton Rouge.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Miles can’t fix all of society’s problems. He knows that.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But we know he’ll do his small part to at least set an example. And he knows something about bringing people of various backgrounds together.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU sometimes plays bad, usually plays good, but team chemistry is never an issue — the Tigers always play hard, always play together.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This whole thing has clearly shaken him, but we also know he works pretty well in crisis mode.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Hurricane Katrina hit a week before he was scheduled to coach his first game at LSU ?— two weeks later a home game with Arizona State got played in Arizona.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Hurricane Rita hit the weekend of his re-scheduled home opener, pushing it back two more days.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He and his team dealt with them. They won the SEC West and, ironically, destroyed the Miami</span> <span style="font-style: italic;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Hurricanes</span> <span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">in the bowl game.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">They’re college students, not above their own brushes with the law.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But in 2011 a failed mass curfew break in August — the famous “Shady’s Bar” incident —could have torn a lot teams apart (the innocent ran a whole lot of extra wind springs along with the guilty). Miles held that bunch together and won 13 straight games before losing the national championship in a rematch with Alabama.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Last November amidst rumors — nay, assumptions —that his firing was a done deal, Miles played it cool and took the high road while most of the school’s administration played the fool. Maybe most memorable was the calming influence he had when some fans were literally in tears on scene at what was presumed to be his last radio call-in show.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s the comfortable, soothing Uncle Les that Baton Rouge needs right now.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“There’s a wound community wide and it generally gets fixed when we all come together and celebrate the Tigers playing,” he finally said on ESPN.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So, fear not, the delightful Mad Hatter will be back in due time.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But Monday wasn’t that time.</span>

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<p class="p1">Follow Scooter Hobbs on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/ScooterAmPress"><span class="s1">twitter.com/ScooterAmPress</span></a>

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