Scooter column: Orgeron’s fate rests with LSU
Published 8:03 am Saturday, November 26, 2016
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Hopefully, Ed Orgeron got himself some oyster stuffing when he got home sometime early Saturday morning.
He’s a pure-blood Cajun, you may have heard, and sounded like he’d been around the delicacy a time or two. He was preoccupied during the normal Thanksgiving feeding hour, but after dispatching of Texas A&M 54-39 (it wasn’t that close) he said he planned to get a good helping of it as soon as he got home.
Hope it was good.
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The guy certainly deserves it.
A victory meal seems about like the only thing he can control at this point.
Whether he’s LSU’s long-term answer remains to be seen. But as interim head coach he was exactly what the Tigers needed to get through this crazy, disjointed season after Les Miles was fired in late September.
He deserves more than a nice parting gift. He deserves an honest appraisal — regardless of what other coaches do.
Friday he did get a meeting with Athletic Director Joe Alleva, and by all accounts the mysterious search committee is taking him seriously, if only as a fall-back candidate.
In fact, it appears to be a matter of LSU waiting to hear what happens with Houston coach Tom Herman, which means waiting to see how serious Texas is about hiring him.
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In Orgeron, LSU at least has a candidate who gives the school an excuse from going all-in stupid on any bidding war with the deep-pocketed Longhorns.
Maybe Orgeron needed to point out how good that win over the Aggies really was.
At times, it seemed like it was only convenient background music for a reality TV show rearranging college football’s coaching landscape.
If Derrius Guice wasn’t side-stepping multiple Aggies, the latest unnamed source had LSU officials holding Herman hostage for questioning. After a punt, people with knowledge of the situation had high-ranking LSU officials force-feeding Herman money.
Apparently when no one was looking — or maybe they were distracted by the perfect dime LSU quarterback Danny Etling dropped on Malachi Dupree to put the Tigers up 20-7 at the half — Jimbo Fisher priced himself out of LSU’s market, which evidently isn’t easy to do.
Fisher, the odds-on LSU favorite despite no tangible reason for him to leave Florida State, suddenly became yesterday’s news.
The only question was how much he turned down on the LSU offer.
The only thing better would have been to get a Texas Longhorns game on split-screen with the Tigers-Aggies.
It would have been compelling.
The Longhorns tried to borrow a page from LSU’s old playbook, seemingly intent on turning head coach Charlie Strong into this year’s Les Miles and saving his job by accidentally making him into a martyr.
Friday’s TCU game probably nixed that ploy.
But the more points LSU scored on Aggies coach Kevin Sumlin, the more social media wondered aloud if A&M might want to jump into the bidding war.
The timing of the reports — Thursday night, with LSU the only game on national television — suggests a lot of classic agent-leaking to the media was going on, all the better to control the narrative and — what the hey? — maybe stuff personal and clients’ pockets.
But that’s the way the process works in the internet world.
All Orgeron can do is wait it out.
LSU apparently will choose between a guy in Herman who’s carefully weighing his options against a certified Cajun who would give up deer and duck season both for the chance at his lifelong dream job.
And yet it still seems like Orgeron’s audition is forever paying for one game — one play, really, against Florida.
He said after the game it was his only regret.
“I just wish we would have beaten Florida,” Orgeron said. “Came up short there. That’s the only thing I’d like to take back.”
Surely, the key points in his Friday interview were his plans for the Tigers’ offense.
But the marriage of necessity between Orgeron and journeyman Steve Ensminger as emergency offensive coordinator hasn’t been all bad itself.
LSU didn’t score against Alabama and didn’t score against Florida when it mattered.
But in seven games Orgeron (Ensminger) has presided over:
l The top three single-game individual rushing performances in LSU’s 123-year history of the sport.
l The only time in that same history that LSU had 200-yard rusher and a 300-yard passer in the same game (Texas &M).
l A pretty good Band-Aid fix for this year’s offense. In the four games under Miles, LSU averaged 339 yards per game (Orgeron’s seven games, it was 475). Miles teams ran for 191.8 (Orgeron’s 264.6), passed for 147.8 (210.4) and scored 21 points per game (32.4).
l A&M’s sudden late offensive explosion — the 22 fourth-quarter points were more than any other team scored all game — may have been a blessing. It was little more than a nuisance as the Tigers kept an aggressive foot on the pedal and showed they can play that kind of game if the situation arises.
At one point, LSU scored touchdowns on six consecutive possessions.
But maybe you’re not allowed that one bad day at the office (the mistake-prone Florida game).
Oh?
Orgeron must be wondering why Herman, who’s in his second year as a head coach, gets a free pass.
This year Herman beat Oklahoma and destroyed Louisville and Heisman Trophy favorite Lamar Jackson … but also lost to Navy, SMU and, just Friday, Memphis.
Orgeron has the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately factor.
Thursday was his best coaching performance — and it had nothing to do with play-calling (which was aggressive to the end).
It was a text-book demonstration of how head coaches earn those millions.
I, for one, did not see that game coming.
On a short week coming off a physical and morale-deflating loss, Orgeron took a team with its best offensive player (Leonard Fournette) and defensive player (Kendell Beckwith) among four missing starters, a team with nothing really to play for and away from home for the holidays, and yet somehow squeezed the best performance of the season out of them.
If that wasn’t enough to realize his dream, at least he knows he handled it with class until the end.
“I’ve been treated like the head coach here on a daily basis. I’ve not been treated like an interim coach,” Orgeron said. “I couldn’t be more appreciative. It was a great opportunity for me.”
Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at shobbs@americanpress.com
LSU coach Ed Orgeron celebrates with players after an NCAA college football game against Texas A&M
