Miles Away from Ordinary

Among fans of the SEC, it is a popular and widely accepted axiom that LSU’s coach is a boob. Ok, maybe not a total boob, but still not somebody you would expect to see breaking down Stephen Hawking’s latest monograph. These insults are especially common across the many SEC blogs and fan sites. For instance, EDBS recently posted the video of LSU’s fake field goal against South Carolina with this quote:

“Oh, and LSU makes a nifty fake in this clip from their 28-16 win over the Cocks. Steve Spurrier’s face is a richly nuanced mix of envy, anger, and amusement. Les Miles’ face says “YAYYYY TAFFY!!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE TAFFY!!!”

EDSBS is not alone in this ridicule – 3rd Saturday in Blogtober recently wrote that seeing “Les Miles trot out with his team” can give opposing fans a warm fuzzy.

And the Memphis Tider regularly refers to Les Miles as ‘Coach Hat.’ Ok, so there is no real defense for the way that Miles wears that hat – it is very 1957.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I read all of these sites regularly, and highly recommend that you visit them.)

And I gotta be honest, I was not terribly pleased by the Les Miles hiring. After the Nick Saban regime, I thought LSU should be looking to a really big name with instant cachet. Les Miles was not that. But in retrospect, I think Skip was hiring on the Nick Saban model. Not that Miles and Saban are similar personality-wise or philosophically, but their resumes look similar:

• Both of them had NFL experience
• Both of them had college head coaching experience
• Both of them had coached at schools that were second fiddle in their states: Saban at Michigan State, and Miles at Oklahoma state.
• Both had relative success at those schools

In those ways, the two are similar.

But in presentation, and demeanor, the two are very, very different. Nick Saban never said anything that he hadn’t sanitized to make sure it meant absolutely nothing. Les Miles frequently shoots off his mouth, which reflects poorly on him and the team – I am convinced that there is one national columnist who is disgusted by Les Miles’ comments about the Pac-10 last summer. And does anyone think that Nick Saban and Bama need any further motivation than the report that Les referred to them as a ‘rival’ and ‘f—–g Alabama!’?

And there are many in Tigerland who remain unconvinced that Les Miles is the correct coach for this team. In fact, many Tiger fans – while eagerly following this year’s team – reacted with anticipation when the rumors of Miles’ possible departure to Michigan at the conclusion of this season.

Suffice it to say, Les Miles has given his critics plenty of fodder. And I have been one of those critics. I thought LSU’s two losses last year should be laid right at Miles’ feet. Both of those losses were due to players making mental mistakes – experienced players who should know better. And that, ultimately, comes back to the coach.

Yet something still was bothering me, tapping away at the back of my brain, refusing to go away. And that was Miles’ record. His 22-4 overall record in his first two years is the first time LSU had posted two 11-win seasons back to back.

But, you might say, he was doing that with Nick Saban’s players, and a couple of Nick Saban’s coaches. And that is true. The conventional wisdom was that a chimpanzee could have coached those teams to 11 wins, and a coach with a half a brain would have won a national championship in 2006.

And I got to wondering about the wisdom of those sentiments. So I decided to troll around the internet and do some comparative work. What better way than to look at how Les has done in his first two years (with Nick Saban’s players) versus what Nick did in his last two years (with Nick Saban’s players.)

The numbers are remarkably similar. In 2003 and 2004, Nick Saban’s record was 22-4. That included one BCS bowl berth – the Sugar Bowl national championship game, which they won over OU 21-14. In 2004, LSU made the Outback bowl, losing to Iowa on a Hail Mary on the last play of the game.

Les’ overall record is also 22-4, he also has one BCS appearance, beating Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl 41-14. In 2005, the Les-led Tigers went to the Peach Bowl, beating Miami 40-3.

Nick Saban’s overall SEC record at LSU in those two years was 14-3. Les Miles’ was 13-4. The difference is their respective SEC title game appearances. Saban was 1-0 in his last two years, and Miles is 0-1 in his first two years.

Les Miles was 2-0 in bowl games during his first two years; Nick Saban was 1-1 in bowl games in his last two years. Interestingly enough, they both appeared in one BCS game and one second-tier bowl.

So how does Miles compare to other SEC Coaches? Taking the best two years of each:

Mark Richt: 24-4 (2nd and 3rd years)
Steve Spurrier, UF: 24-2 (6th and 7th years)
Steve Spurrier, USC: 15-10 (1st and 2nd years)
Phil Fulmer: 24-2 (5th and 6th years)
Urban Meyer: 22-4 (1st and 2nd years)

And for comparison:

Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant: 23-1 (21st and 22nd years)

What those numbers tell us is that Les Miles is not the greatest coach in the history of the SEC. But he is in the upper echelon, on a level with Saban, Richt, Meyer, and Fulmer. Of course, that group sits on a pedestal slightly lower than the the ones that hold Spurrier and Bryant.

Finally, if we are going to blame Les for the bad losses at Auburn and Florida in 2006 and the SEC championship game loss in 2005, we should give him credit for some of the wins. He deserves credit for the opening win at Arizona State in 2005, after two hurricanes ravaged the state of Louisiana. That game, I might point out, involved at least 2 fake kicks from LSU, and 2 blocked kicks. Les also deserves credit for the big wins in the two bowl games. Those two teams may not have been great teams, but well coached teams beat the ones that they are supposed to beat, and LSU beat both of them good.

In conclusion, I am not a Les apologist, regardless of how it appears. To be honest, I am not going to mourn very much when if he takes the Michigan job. But the results that he has produced have put him fairly high in the SEC pantheon.