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“I felt it,” Orgeron says in
his trademark rumbling
growl. “I felt it as a resident,
as a fan, and I feel it as a
coach. Freedom, man. We
don’t have to hear that stuff
no more. I’m just happy for
the people of Louisiana.”
Orgeron’s lofty perch
from the balcony of the
newly opened LSU Football
Operations Center creates
the impression of a king sur-
veying his kingdom, only he
wants to share the riches
with everyone.
He can’t take these gifts
for granted, because deep
down he knows it so easily
could have been someone
else manning the throne.
Someone younger, flashier,
more sellable, someone who
could pass through the same
central casting require-
ments for a big-time college
football coach that Orgeron
could not meet six years ago
right down the road from
Hollywood at USC.
If there was ever a top
program that would accept
the red-faced 58-year-old
Cajun with the gravelly ac-
cent as a proper cultural fit,
it is this one, nestled be-
tween mossy University
Lake and the banks of the
Mighty Mississippi. And yet,
even here, he was not
wanted in the role after
putting together a 6-2 record
as the interim head coach,
just as he had done at USC
before Steve Sarkisian was
offered the job.
At LSU, the hot name
was Tom Herman, then the
coach at Houston. Since
those uncertain days, Orge-
ron has won more games
against top-10 opponents
than any other coach — in-
cluding one against Her-
man’s Texas team Sept. 7 in
Austin — but reliving the
last week of the 2016 season
still induces a tinge of terror
in Orgeron’s darting brown
eyes.
LSU played at Texas
A&M on Thanksgiving Day
that year. The night before,
Orgeron’s wife, Kelly, came
back from dinner and told
him that she heard LSU had
offered the job to Jimbo
Fisher, then the coach of
Florida State. The Tigers
roughed up the Aggies, but
later on Thanksgiving night,
a staff member told Orgeron
that a report was saying
LSU had offered the job to
Herman.
“I said, ‘That’s good! Last
night it was Jimbo, tonight
it’s Tom, maybe tomorrow
it’s us!’ ” Orgeron recalls.
He laughs at the remem-
brance, but it was hard to
keep perspective then.
“Because I been here be-
fore, you know,” Orgeron
says, a subdued reference to
his USC heartbreak.
The Friday after beating
Texas A&M, he met with
then-LSU athletic director
Joe Alleva, ready to fight for
what he believed was right. A
couple of Orgeron’s staff
members had helped him
compile books and manuals
overflowing with creative
ideas of how to bring the Ti-
gers back to the level they
achieved Saturday night in
Tuscaloosa.
He felt he had already
spurred a cultural transition
from team into family, the
Tigers’ collective heart
swelling and pulling their
bodies further than they
ever thought they could go.
But Alleva set the vast
reading material aside and
leveled with Orgeron.
“I gotta tell you, I’m going
to meet with Tom Herman
tonight,” Alleva said.
“I told my staff to leave,”
Orgeron says. “I said, ‘Joe,’
and I touched him in his
belly, ‘You know in your belly
I’m the right man for LSU. I
look forward to being the
next head coach of LSU,’ and
I walked out.”
That night, at home in
Mandeville, his family
staged a belated Thanksgiv-
ing dinner. Orgeron felt sosick he couldn’t eat. He went
off to bed and prayed. Before
he could fall asleep, news
flashed across the ticker
that Herman was expected
to take the LSU job. Kelly as-
sured him it couldn’t be true,
that he would wake up the
next morning and be offered
the position.
“I said, ‘What you
drinkin’?” Orgeron says,
banging a table for effect.
In the middle of the night,
Orgeron woke to his phone
buzzing. Lane Kiffin, whom
he had promised Alleva
would be his offensive coor-
dinator, said Herman was
now reportedly leaning
toward Texas. Around 5:30
a.m., Orgeron missed a call
from Alleva. He frantically
called back.
“Can you be here at 7:30?”
Alleva asked.
In a flash, Orgeron was
blazing his truck down In-
terstate 12. He put on his fa-
vorite song, Creedence
Clearwater Revival’s “Born
on the Bayou,” a low-coun-
try boy feeling a high he’d ne-
ver experienced, before he
realized something impor-
tant: He hadn’t been offered
the job yet.
He arrived at the office
and saw Alleva waiting for
him by the Tiger statue at
the entrance.
“You want the job orwhat?” Alleva said.
“I grabbed him and
shoooook him, maaan!” Or-
geron says.
“You know, when you
pointed to my belly, all night
long I was feeling something
in my belly,” Alleva told him.
“I said, ‘I put that Cajun
gravy on you, boy,’ ” Orgeron
says with a hearty cackle.
Orgeron never asked
what happened with Her-
man, whether he was offered
the position or not. It didn’t
matter one bit then and still
doesn’t. Just check out the
blessings life has bestowed
upon him.
“I got my own elevator!”
he says.::Last Saturday night in
the visitors’ locker room at
Bryant-Denny Stadium, the
lifetime LSU fan inside Or-
geron busted out. His play-
ers had just slain the Ala-
bama dragon 46-41, and they
surrounded their exuberant
head coach, waiting for in-
spiration.
“Roll Tide, what? ... you,”
Orgeron screamed to ap-
plause, using an expletive.
What he did not know at
the time was that one of his
players had set up a live
stream on his phone of the
team’s raucous celebration,and now the world knew
what Orgeron could be like
behind closed doors. It was
the type of behavior that
could have made any re-
maining critics of his cultur-
al fit at USC feel vindicated.
It only made him more
beloved here.
“That shouldn’t have
happened,” Orgeron said
when asked about the locker
room moment being live
streamed at his Monday
news conference. “I ad-
dressed the player who did
it. He felt bad.”
Orgeron did not apolo-
gize.
“You know, the things
that I say outside to the me-
dia, those are things I want
to get out. If I wanted that to
get out, I would have said
that outside,” he said, draw-
ing laughter from reporters.
“But when you get emo-
tional, you talk to your team
like it’s your family. The way I
talk to my family around the
dinner table, we say some
things that outside the fam-
ily we don’t say. It was not
meant to hurt anybody,
nothin’ like that. Just a fiery
moment, a very emotional
moment with our team,
that’s all it was.”
The Tigers had set the
whole state on fire. When
they returned home, thou-
sands had gathered at theairport to shower them with
cheers. Offensive coordina-
tor Steve Ensminger, who
played quarterback for LSU
in the late 1970s and has been
on staff the last decade, told
Orgeron he hadn’t seen any-
thing like it. Quarterback
Joe Burrow, the Heisman
Trophy favorite, posted a vi-
deo on Twitter of him jog-
ging along a fence slapping
hands and said, “Louisiana,
I love you.”
On Sunday morning at
Grace Life Fellowship, lead
pastor Tim Chalas opened
worship by saying, “The
gospel has a lion that defeats
Satan. We had Tigers that
defeated Saban, so it’s not
exactly the same, but it sure
feels good to be an LSU fan
today, doesn’t it?”
John Bel Edwards, the
Democratic governor of
Louisiana, is up for reelec-
tion with a Saturday runoff
against Republican Eddie
Rispone. Edwards and Or-
geron have become friends
after meeting at a duck
camp in South Lafourche
Parish a few years ago, and
it’s safe to say Edwards is re-
lieved Orgeron isn’t on the
ballot.
“I’ve been out campaign-
ing right now, all over the
state,” Edwards says, “and I
will tell you there’s more ex-
citement around that LSU
football program than any-
time I can remember in my
life, and I’m 53 years old.”
But wait. The Tigers won
the 2003 and 2007 national
championships with Saban
and Les Miles, respectively,
running the program. How
could this be more thrilling
than that? Edwards ex-
plains it’s the way this LSU
team is doing it, with a high-
flying spread offense that
never stops attacking. Then
there’s the matter of the ulti-
mate underdog who gets to
sit on that balcony in Baton
Rouge.
“The rest of the country
has a hard time understand-
ing him, but we don’t,” Ed-
wards said of Orgeron. “We
recognize that as a South
Louisiana, South Lafourche
accent, and to have a home-
grown coach, a Louisiana
native who is obviously very
passionate about our state,
to have him coaching while
we’re doing so well, it does
add an extra bit of excite-
ment.
“We’re just glad y’all
didn’t hire him at USC, and
he became available and
found his way to LSU.”
Now’s the time to gloat.
The Trojans had to move on
from Sarkisian within two
years because of the coach’s‘To have a homegrown coach, a Louisiana native who is obviously
very passionate about our state, to have him coaching while we’re
doing so well, it does add an extra bit of excitement.’
—JOHNBELEDWARDS, governor of Louisiana on LSU coach Ed OrgeronLSU QUARTERBACKJoe Burrow hugs head coach Ed Orgeron after the Tigers went into Alabama a week ago and came away with a 46-41 win.
Kevin C. CoxGetty ImagesA son of the bayou finally finds niche
[Orgeron, from D1]
ORGERONwas focused during the Alabama game, but after the win he let out an expletive that endeared him
to the LSU faithful. He called his words “a fiery moment, a very emotional moment with our team.”Vasha HuntAssociated Press[SeeOrgeron, D5]