LSU’s replacing Les Miles: Timeline, updates, and more

LSU interim head coach Ed Orgeron is no longer the favorite to replace Les Miles in 2017 and beyond, but he’s planning an aggressive pitch to athletic director Joe Alleva following the Tigers’ season finale on Thanksgiving night at Texas A&M.

A source confirmed to SB Nation that Orgeron will meet with Alleva Friday morning, as first reported by Ross Dellenger for The Advocate. Orgeron will then leave Baton Rouge to recruit. An immediate decision on Orgeron’s future with the program is not expected during the meeting.

LSU fired Les Miles after more than 11 seasons, two SEC titles, a national championship, and endless drama of the good and bad varieties.

This means one of the country’s premier jobs is now open. The state of Louisiana produces some of the country’s most elite talent, and LSU gets to sit in the middle of it as the state’s only Power 5 program. It also has access to Houston and the rest of Texas, plus Florida and the rest of the Southeast. Its next head coach will be able to recruit with a 100,000-seat stadium, a rabid fanbase, and one of the country’s best NFL lineages.

The importance of beating Alabama on Saturday night hasn’t lessened for LSU just because Ed Orgeron is 3-0 as interim head coach.

But it might not be a one-game referendum on his long-term candidacy.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Eleven years removed from his first head coaching job, “Ed Orgeron, LSU head coach,” is as improbable a title as the new version of the man holding it.

“I’m not the defensive line coach coaching the team,” he tells me. “Now I give each coach on the staff accountability. Let them manage their group. Give them a say so. Let ’em coach.”

It’s your weekly Sunday PAPN recap! We’re setting the timer and walking through the S&P+ top 25. That means talking about...

* Note: This bullet point will self-destruct if or when LSU does.

Last weekend, LSU fired head coach Les Miles and replaced him with interim coach Ed Orgeron. Offensive coordinator Cam Cameron also found himself out of a job, reportedly because Orgeron fired him upon taking over.

If Orgeron and new coordinator Steve Ensminger wanted to put a stamp on LSU’s offense, the early returns are quite promising. Check out this note:

Les Miles, the newly fired head coach of LSU, has at various turns been connected to the same job at his alma mater Michigan. Miles still has fond feelings for Michigan, and his name came up often when the Wolverines job was open in 2007 (to be filled by Rich Rodriguez) and in 2011 (to be filled by Brady Hoke.)

Obviously, it never happened. Miles didn’t take over at Michigan, and he almost surely never will, even if he really ought to go satellite camping with Jim Harbaugh.

It’s September 28, the phones won’t stop ringing, the dogs won’t stop barking, and we’re already well into coaching search silly season. Good times.

Today’s PAPN breaks down...

When LSU backed off firing Les Miles last November, it simply prolonged a festering problem, namely that it had a coach who was turning A+ talent into B+ results. LSU realized its error after the Tigers started 2-2 and exhibited the same issues that have plagued LSU for years.

The timing of the firing had at least something to do with Miles’ Rasputin-like ability to avoid the grave ...

Welcome back to another edition of the SB Nation College Football Recruiting Podcast.

In this week’s episode, I discussed a number of topics including:

Les Miles, former LSU head coach, played offensive line at Michigan and hails from Ohio. He has a deep appreciation for the Wolverines and the legacy of his former coach and mentor, Bo Schembechler. Multiple times during his LSU run, he had to publicly deny rumors that he was leaving for Ann Arbor. Monday, he listed Michigan among the schools he’ll be rooting for going forward.

Harbaugh could hire Miles as an “analyst” who’s not technically part of the coaching staff for the rest of the season, similar to what Nick Saban just did with former USC head coach Steve Sarkisian. Considering how entrenched Harbaugh is likely to be until Miles is nearly 70 years old*, this could be Miles’ lone shot to work for his alma mater again. But that’s just one potential option.

LSU vs. Auburn was going to be a memorable game, if only because it paired two desperate rivals in a wild venue with conference stakes and the employment statuses of two prominent head coaches on the line.

Auburn won, 18-13, almost certainly ending the Playoff hopes of the preseason No. 5 team, putting Les Miles right back on the hot seat (and a day later, getting him fired), boosting AU’s own bowl chances and buying Gus Malzahn some breathing room.

1. Les Miles was fired from his job as LSU football coach this weekend. Getting fired four games into a season would only seem premature if time ever mattered to Miles, but it rarely did. Miles ran out of time, added time to games, forced others to work against it, and sometimes just melted the clock completely.

A one-score LSU game in the last three minutes could accelerate from full-on torpor to electric insanity, mostly because of his belief that a football game can sometimes be a little longer than 60 minutes if he needed it to be. You called people, tweeted at them, and yelled in all-caps when LSU ran shit down to the wire.

Class may be an overused trope in our culture, but Monday morning Les Miles oozed it from every pore straight into your listening ears. You see, nearly 24 hours ago LSU fired Miles, and for the first time since 2004, he will not lead the Tigers out onto the field on a fall Saturday.

Miles spoke to The Dan Patrick Show Monday about how it all went down.

LSU fired Les Miles Sunday. At its core, it was a simple decision. LSU lost an unacceptable number of games over the last four seasons relative to the amount of talent on the roster and resource commitment to the program.

Miles’ Tigers signed 67 four- and five-star recruits over the last four cycles. Only Alabama and Ohio State signed more. Yet in his last 56 games, spanning from the loss to Alabama in the BCS Championship to LSU’s most recent loss to Auburn, LSU is just 39-17 (.696).

Les Miles’ hire of Cam Cameron as LSU offensive coordinator in 2013 was met with disdain. The two had gotten to know each other on Bo Schembechler’s Michigan staff in the 1980s, and Cameron returned to the college ranks after spending 11 seasons in the NFL.

In 10 seasons as an NFL coordinator, Cameron’s offenses had only once finished in the bottom half of the league in offensive DVOA. And in his first year in Baton Rouge, with Zach Mettenberger throwing to Rueben Randle and Odell Beckham Jr., LSU improved from 36th to 14th in Off. S&P+.

Coach O is back. On what seemed to be a quiet Sunday in college football, LSU fired head coach Les Miles after 12 seasons in Baton Rouge. Offensive coordinator Cam Cameron was also fired.

With the official announcement, LSU announced that current defensive line coach Ed Orgeron would be the interim head coach.

Amid 12 years that began with a game relocated by Hurricane Katrina, included the 2007 national championship and 113 other wins, and ended with an astounding loss at Auburn, LSU finally succeeded in firing Les Miles.

After a 2015 near-coup that instead saw him carried off the field in victory by his players, the story of LSU’s 2016 was clear: deliver on preseason No. 5 promise or bust. The roster was going to be too experienced and talented for anything less, and the frustrations of a stagnating offense and a growing gap between the Tigers and rival Alabama meant Miles’ job wouldn’t feel safe until he beat Nick Saban in Baton Rouge on Nov. 5.

The Tigers have a head coaching vacancy as of Sept. 25, earlier than Oct. 13 of last season, when Steve Spurrier retired from South Carolina and USC fired Steve Sarkisian. Three years ago today, new LSU interim head coach Ed Orgeron took the same position at USC when Lane Kiffin was let go.

Major jobs are opening earlier, and that’s a trend, but the circumstances around each can be wildly different. On Sunday, SB Nation spoke about Les Miles’ dismissal with multiple agents who have coaching clients.

LSU has finally done it, and we don’t think the Tigers will renege this time. The school has fired Les Miles.

Sunday afternoon, the school announced that both Miles and offensive coordinator Cam Cameron have been fired. LSU also announced that defensive line coach Ed Orgeron would take over as the interim head coach for the remainder of the season. Orgeron was the interim head coach in USC in 2013, where he led the Trojans to a 6-2 finish to the season.

As time expired in Saturday night’s LSU-Auburn game, LSU took a last-second snap, and quarterback Danny Etling rolled out to find receiver D.J. Chark in the right corner of the end zone. Chark made a brilliant catch that, for a moment, appeared to give LSU a 19-18 victory. But it didn’t work out that way, and LSU lost the touchdown and the game.

Let’s break down everything here.