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| 8/28 | 2008 Preview: Encore For LSU? |
| | BATON ROUGE — For a team that returns gobs of talent and is fresh off winning its second national championship in four years, LSU seems like an afterthought in the national discussion entering the new season. The Tigers are ranked No. 7 in both major polls and have even taken a back seat to Georgia and Florida as favorites to win the Southeastern Conference. Even in the SEC West, Auburn was a clear choice among media and coaches to claim the division title. And that’s just fine with head coach Les Miles, whose popularity soared with fans not only for the crystal football trophy he hoisted at the Superdome last January, but also for pledging allegiance to Tiger Nation when he turned down overtures from his Michigan alma mater to remain in Baton Rouge. Continue... |
| 8/28 | LSU Q&A -- There's Only One |
| | Normally, I like to take this annual opportunity for a quick game of 20 questions, LSU-style, followed, shockingly enough, by 20 answers about the upcoming season. One problem. QUESTION: Who is LSU’s quarterback going to be? ANSWER: I don’t know. See what I mean? So now what are we going to do? Where do we go from here? You wondering maybe who the Homecoming Queen is going to be? I don’t know that either. Q: You mean quarterback is the only question mark LSU has this season? A: That’s the rumor. Nobody else has been able to dig another one up. Loaded, top to bottom, with an embarrassing wealth of the strongest, the swiftest and some of the baddest. Continue... |
| 8/26 | Miles Still Keeping Starting Quarterback Under Hat |
| | Less than a week before LSU opens defense of its national championship and ... still no smoke from the Tigers’ coaching offices. Still no starting quarterback. “I don’t think it’s important to name a quarterback right now,” LSU head coach Les Miles said on Monday as the Tigers eased into the routine of their first game week of the season, preparing for a Saturday afternoon’s date with Appalachian State. “The team understands that we have three talented guys and all three will probably play. One or two will probably split the duties.” Most of the August focus has been between sophomore Andrew Hatch and redshirt freshman Jarrett Lee, with Hatch the presumed favorite after Lee missed four practices last week with a sore back. Not so fast, Miles said. Continue... |
| 8/20 | Column: Can Keiland Come Out And Play? |
| | LSU doesn’t have a problem at running back — even with Jacob Hester now in the NFL, the Tigers have a glut in the stable most coaches would give up their loaner cars for. It will be another committee, and LSU has proven in recent years that multi-fresh talented backs are better than one guy “getting into the flow of the game.” What they have there, though, is the great mystery of this fall camp. Forget about the quarterback sweepstakes. What nobody can figure out — and the Internet message boards’ finest minds are on the case — is how it was that running back Keiland Williams landed in head coach Les Miles’ doghouse. Continue... |
| 8/15 | LSU Hopes Two Heads Are As Good As One On Defense |
| | LSU is banking that two heads will at least match one of the most respected defensive minds in college football. If it was, in fact, Bo Pelini’s defense that led LSU to the national championship a year ago, that unit now has dual ownership with Pelini having left the Tigers to become head coach at Nebraska. At least partly based on Pelini’s parting suggestion, head coach Les Miles named not one but two defensive coordinators to replace him — secondary coach Doug Mallory and linebackers coach Bradley Dale Peveto are co-coordinators. “I am fortunate to have two veterans on our staff,” Miles said. “They were in on every strategic meeting that took place with our defense a year ago. “They’re doing a really, really good job. They work very hard and they’re both ‘players coaches.’ “They are very comfortable with their shared duties.” Continue... |
| 8/12 | Miles Says Lee's Injury Not Serious |
| | Nothing serious, LSU head coach Les Miles said. But redshirt freshman Jarrett Lee, who is battling for the starting quarterback job with sophomore Andrew Hatch, missed both of the Tigers’ two practices Monday and will miss the team’s first scrimmage today. Miles, typically vague when discussing injuries, called the injury a “freakish” thing that occurred during Saturday’s workout when another player fell on his leg. He described it as a “soft tissue injury.” “It’s not serious and it does not require surgery,” Miles said. “It’s a rest thing. It is not a severe anything, so we feel like we will have him back in short order.” Continue... |
| 8/10 | Miles Confident Leaders Will Emerge |
| | BATON ROUGE — LSU has talent. Lots of it. But it’s not ALL about talent. For instance, LSU head coach Les Miles isn’t worried about his running backs, even with last season’s leading rusher Jacob Hester gone to the NFL. “I feel like we have plenty of talent there,” Miles said, adding that the position is so stacked that it will once again be run “by committee.” No, LSU isn’t running out of running backs. Charles Scott can still be a bruiser, Keiland Williams can outrun just about anybody and Richard Murphy is something of a side-step artist. And that’s before even bringing little bottle rocket Trindon Holliday into the equation. “But what I want to see is the leadership emerge,” Miles said after the Tigers completed their first week of work. Continue... |
| 8/9 | Column: A Week Into Practice ... In Search of LSU’s Starting Quarterback |
| | BATON ROUGE — I was on a mission here at LSU’s Media Day Friday. I was going to find LSU’s starting quarterback. I was told up front there was no sense swinging by Jacksonville, Ala., because LSU’s starting quarterback didn’t live there. Ryan Perrilloux need not apply. So we limited the search to eligible Tigers. After all, that seems to be the only real question about this LSU team. All the silly preseason prediction magazines, some of which are still taken seriously, seem to start out the same way when talking about LSU. “If Ryan Perrilloux was still....” Best I can tell it’s the difference in LSU being ranked in the top three nationally with the presumption of another SEC West title and being around No. 10 with Auburn given the nod in the West. Continue... |
| 8/3 | Column: Which SEC Coaches Are The Most Fun? |
| | Because football season is only ALMOST here — which means nothing is really happening but you have to talk about it anyway — this is the time of year you start seeing a lot of ranking of coaches. I really don’t care to add to that littering of the landscape. In the SEC, for instance, I’m not sure how you compare the situation that Urban Meyer has at Florida with that of Vanderbilt’s Bobby Johnson. But I did have the opportunity during the three-day media days last week in Birmingham, Ala., to sit through the sermons of all 12 SEC head coaches. So you kind of get a feel for their personalities and, selfishly, for how it would be to cover them on a regular basis. So this ranking will be a little different — from top to bottom, who I think would be the easiest and most fun to cover. Continue... |
| 7/26 | Column: 2008 SEC Football Could Be More Cut-Throat Than Ever |
| | HOOVER, Ala. — Florida coach Urban Meyer recalled the scene when the 12 SEC football coaches, presumably having checked their firearms at the door, convened in a room at the league’s spring meetings. He said he looked around the room and “I counted, right off the top of my head, nine coaches who think that they are going to win the conference championship. Nine! Right now! “I don’t know if you’ll see that anywhere else in America.” Out of respect to the needy, Meyer declined to identify the three coaches who appeared to be luke-warm, lest they be tarred-and-feathered on talk radio back home. The SEC has been the nation’s toughest conference for several years now. This year might be the biggest slugfest yet. In fact, it might be easier to pick out three teams that don’t have a chance. Continue... |
| 7/26 | SEC Home To College Football’s Best Coaches |
| | HOOVER, Ala. — Just before he took his turn at SEC media days Friday, Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville’s name was spelled wrong on the big video screen backdrop to the podium. “Tubberville,” it said. Tough crowd. Tuberville has won 50 games in the last five years, including a 13-0 season in 2004 that didn’t even warrant his Tigers a chance to play for the national championship. What’s it take to get any respect around here? Florida coach Urban Meyer remembered the SEC spring meetings in Destin, Fla., when the 12 coaches gathered for their annual meetings. “I don’t get in awe very often,” Meyer recalled. “But you looked around that room (at those coaches) and I don’t want to say I was in awe, but ... man, there are some fine coaches.” No kidding. The SEC, never a spot for the faint-hearted has become the destination spot for the best and the brightest in coaching, many bordering on rock-star status. Continue... |
| 7/25 | Alabama Fans Optimistic, Recent History Notwithstanding |
| | HOOVER, Ala. — Nick Saban got the big question out of the way early when the Alabama coach took the podium Thursday at the Southeastern Conference football media days. No, he’s not mad at Les Miles, no matter what the LSU head coach was insinuating last Sunday when he warned Tiger boosters in New Orleans not to get too carried away with last year’s victory over Saban and Alabama. You know the line by heart by now. “It seems like a lot of teams in Louisiana beat that team last year,” Miles dead-panned. That was an obvious reference to the low point of Saban’s first year at Alabama, a 21-14 loss to lowly Louisiana-Monroe. It’s a hot topic in Alabama. Continue... |
| 7/25 | Column: If There's A College Football Playoff The SEC Will Lead The Way |
| | HOOVER, Ala. — So you want a full-blown playoff for college football, do you? Better pack a lunch. Want a giant leap forward from the current system? This is the place to be. Or at least this is the place to start. The Wynfrey Hotel here is hosting the 12-ring media circus previewing the Southeastern Conference’s 76th football season. An entire region hangs on every word uttered. The hotel, for three days at least, is ground zero for the most zealous, football-crazed, face-painting, go-to-hell-fill-in-the-blank, academia-be-damned, atomic-pit tailgating people on the planet. The ballrooms have to handle 800 media members. The corridor between the hotel lobby and the Galleria Mall is set up with 28 booths — twenty-EIGHT! — for talk radio shows getting the word out, dawn-to-dusk, to a lot of people who paint their patios in school colors, no matter how tacky. It happens with other conferences, at least with scattered outbreaks of the foolishness. The difference? Here they make no apology for it. Continue... |
| 7/24 | Column: Miles In More Hot Water With Bama |
| | HOOVER, Ala. — Les Miles got hauled up in front of the media high tribunal here Wednesday. Nobody seemed to care much that the LSU head coach has joined the ever-bulging legion of SEC coaches with national championship rings, a fraternity that now includes 5 of the league’s 12 head coaches. Nice work, Les. But on to more important stuff. First, he had to answer for a few things, particularly here in the state the University of Alabama calls home. Miles’ latest crime against Crimson came Sunday night in New Orleans when he cautioned an LSU alumni gathering against celebrating too merrily about the Tigers’ victory over Alabama and Nick Saban last season. “It seems like a lot of teams in Louisiana beat that team last year,” Miles replied, an obvious and blatant reference to Saban’s embarrassing, 21-14 loss to UL-Monroe during his rocky shakedown cruise with the Tide. Continue... |
| 7/24 | Notebook: SEC Deciding About TV Network |
| | HOOVER, Ala. — The Southeastern Conference will decide sometime this fall if it will pursue its own cable network similar to what the Big 10 and Western Athletic Conferences have already done. The conference currently has contracts with CBS, ESPN, Raycom Sports and FSN South, all of which expire at the end of this season. “The conference is considering its television and multimedia options,” SEC Commissioner Mike Slive said. He said a major factor in the decision might to be the league’s ability to get its non-football sports more television time. One complication would be that many of the SEC schools have private deals that bring in revenue beyond the conference’s network contracts. LSU, for instance, has its Tigervision pay-per-view network for games that aren’t on network television and a deal with Cox Sports that shows replays. Few schools in other conferences have such arrangements. Continue... |
| 7/24 | Can Tim Tebow Be Too Good to Be True? |
| | HOOVER, Ala. — Who knows how many true Florida Gators’ fans there are living in this Alabama suburb of Birmingham. But all of them seemed to be crammed into the lobby of the Wynfrey Hotel Wednesday afternoon. It’s a rite of SEC football media days — the 40 feet or so between the hotel’s front door and the bottom of the escalator that gets one off limits to the public for media interviews upstairs in the big ballroom. But it’s a gauntlet usually reserved for rock-star coaches like Alabama’s Nick Saban and Florida’s own Urban Meyer. Yet Wednesday Meyer had trouble getting noticed by his own fans. Continue... |
| 7/19 | Column: Miles More Comfortable With Title |
| | WESTLAKE — Maybe it’s a lot more fun working a room when the bona fide national championship crystal is on display, sitting just outside the door. But there did seem to be a little extra bounce in Les Miles’ step when the LSU coach made his annual sojourn to the Isle of Capri’s event center to hobnob with area Tiger alumni and fans. Miles has lost some tussles with the English language over the years and he’s probably never going to be an electrifying song-and-dance man up at the podium, even when preaching to the choir. But he’s getting better. Way better. He was totally at ease, even in the scripted new format of the affair, while rehashing the ups and downs of the national championship and looking ahead to a season that begins in 42 days. Continue... |
| 7/1 | Column: Bertman Always Kept It Fun |
| | The LSU athletic department is a lesser place today. Skip Bertman doesn’t work there anymore. Nothing against Joe Alleva, who gets to move into Bertman’s athletic director’s office. But there will never be another Skip Bertman. You know the resume, of course — five national championships as head baseball coach, followed by presiding over the Golden Age of LSU sports as athletic director. I could mention that the five national championships are the least of what he did in baseball. For my money, no coach in Louisiana history ever had more impact on his own sport, not so much just for winning, but for his willingness to share the blueprint that also made baseball relevant and important at LSU. And not just in Louisiana. Baseball is what it is in the SEC because Bertman’s commercial success forced other athletic directors to sit up and take notice, even if only because they always have an eye out for a spare dollar to be made. To some degree, that’s even true on the national scale. If you doubt it, follow him around Omaha sometime at the College World Series and feel the outright reverence. As athletic director for this decade, well ... name a better time to be an LSU fan? Continue... |
| 6/23 | Column: Tigers Will Find Their Way Back To Omaha |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — You certainly don’t want to make too much out of this. LSU had a baseball team here, not an envoy of missionaries. The Tigers were trying to score runs and win games, not save babies from burning buildings. The weather delays they had to deal with were inconveniences, not the plagues of Egypt. They did win a game in the ninth inning with high dramatics, but I doubt it stirred the Nobel Peace Prize selection committee. So I’m not sure what head coach Paul Mainieri was talking about, when it was all over, when he spoke almost in tears about how inspiring the whole bunch of them were and what a joy they were to coach and how he wished he had enough daughters for all of them to wed. OK. We get the point. Nice guys. And they didn’t finish last. They finished fifth in the College World Series. Continue... |
| 6/21 | Tigers Season Ends In Omaha |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — Win, lose or almost get rained out — LSU makes things exciting. But Omaha is about to be a dull place. Tim Federowicz two-out grand slam in the top of the ninth broke a three-all tie and gave North Carolina a 7-3 victory to eliminate LSU from its 14th trip to the College World Series. “I guess you could say we ran out of miracles,” said LSU head coach Paul Mainieri, who needed a four-run ninth-inning rally to beat Rice Tuesday just to get this far. “The harsh reality is that our season has come to a halt. “When we look back on the season it will be fondly. But right now, it really hurts. I really hurt for these kids.” They didn’t go down without a fight despite managing only four hits in a game that started Thursday, was resumed Friday with LSU trailing 2-0 and endured another hour-plus rain delay early in the game. “I felt like we were very fortunate to win tonight and to beat them twice in the tournament,” North Carolina coach Tom Fox said. “It was a terrific game.” Continue... |
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