Aaron Carrara
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The Tigers open as a 4 point favorite over the Longhorns at DKR next weekend.
Over/Under on the game is set at 51.5 points.
Over/Under on the game is set at 51.5 points.
LSU opens as favorite over Texas
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primal defense
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Good! I like Herman's record as an underdog.
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LSU star: Sam Ehlinger isn't "too much of a threat"
ByAUSTIN NIVISON 62 minutes ago
1
No. 6 LSU and No. 10 Texas both cruised to big wins over their Week 1 opponents, and that means they can now turn their attention to one another ahead of a top 10 clash in Baton Rouge.
That also means that the trash talk between the two national championship contenders can commence. LSU linebacker K’Lavon Chaisson was asked on Sunday about the challenge that Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger presents. Let’s just say Chaisson, who faced Ehlinger at the high school level, isn’t overly concerned about the Longhorns’ signal caller.
“I knew it was coming,” Chaisson told Brian Holland of WGMB. “I saw it on the schedule as a recruit. I’m glad we get to go against him again. I don’t really find him too much of a threat. Not taking a shot at him, but he uses his legs more than his arm. Just like high school. He has a decent arm, but it’s more about his legs.”
Ehlinger can use his legs, as Chaisson points out. He’s already totaled 897 rushing yards and 18 rushing touchdowns in 24 games at Texas. However, Ehlinger has proven that his arm is more than up to the task. 2018 was Ehlinger’s break out season in Austin, and he threw for 3,292 yards and 25 touchdowns. That was obviously no fluke because Ehlinger picked up right where he left off on Saturday. The Longhorn quarterback threw for 276 yards and four scores against Louisiana Tech on Saturday.
LSU’s defense is among the best units on that side of the ball in the country, but giving Ehlinger and the Longhorns some bulletin board material may not be the best decision. Then again, Ehlinger hasn’t been afraid to voice his opinion on the national stage either. After Texas’ win over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl to cap off last season, Ehlinger declared Texas’ return as a top program.
“Longhorn Nation — we’re baaaaaaaaaaaack!” Ehlinger said on the stage after the game.
Despite Chaisson’s thoughts on Ehlingers, the game between the Longhorns and the Tigers features a couple of top flight quarterbacks in Ehlinger and LSU’s Joe Burrow. After being more of a ground and pound offense in years past, LSU showed that it can light up the scoreboard in its win over Georgia Southern on Saturday night. Wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase was excited to see LSU spreading people out and spraying the ball all over the field.
“We did spread the ball out a lot and that's what made it look good,” Chase said. “Everyone is having fun since they're touching the ball now. I think everybody has a smile on their face just because everybody is catching the ball."
This could be a high-scoring game, and Chaisson will have to back up his words and slow Ehlinger down to give his team a key win. But that’s easier said than done.
https://247sports.com/college/lsu/Article/LSU-Texas-football-Sam-Ehlinger-KLavon-Chaisson-135073397/
ByAUSTIN NIVISON 62 minutes ago
1
No. 6 LSU and No. 10 Texas both cruised to big wins over their Week 1 opponents, and that means they can now turn their attention to one another ahead of a top 10 clash in Baton Rouge.
That also means that the trash talk between the two national championship contenders can commence. LSU linebacker K’Lavon Chaisson was asked on Sunday about the challenge that Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger presents. Let’s just say Chaisson, who faced Ehlinger at the high school level, isn’t overly concerned about the Longhorns’ signal caller.
“I knew it was coming,” Chaisson told Brian Holland of WGMB. “I saw it on the schedule as a recruit. I’m glad we get to go against him again. I don’t really find him too much of a threat. Not taking a shot at him, but he uses his legs more than his arm. Just like high school. He has a decent arm, but it’s more about his legs.”
Ehlinger can use his legs, as Chaisson points out. He’s already totaled 897 rushing yards and 18 rushing touchdowns in 24 games at Texas. However, Ehlinger has proven that his arm is more than up to the task. 2018 was Ehlinger’s break out season in Austin, and he threw for 3,292 yards and 25 touchdowns. That was obviously no fluke because Ehlinger picked up right where he left off on Saturday. The Longhorn quarterback threw for 276 yards and four scores against Louisiana Tech on Saturday.
LSU’s defense is among the best units on that side of the ball in the country, but giving Ehlinger and the Longhorns some bulletin board material may not be the best decision. Then again, Ehlinger hasn’t been afraid to voice his opinion on the national stage either. After Texas’ win over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl to cap off last season, Ehlinger declared Texas’ return as a top program.
“Longhorn Nation — we’re baaaaaaaaaaaack!” Ehlinger said on the stage after the game.
Despite Chaisson’s thoughts on Ehlingers, the game between the Longhorns and the Tigers features a couple of top flight quarterbacks in Ehlinger and LSU’s Joe Burrow. After being more of a ground and pound offense in years past, LSU showed that it can light up the scoreboard in its win over Georgia Southern on Saturday night. Wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase was excited to see LSU spreading people out and spraying the ball all over the field.
“We did spread the ball out a lot and that's what made it look good,” Chase said. “Everyone is having fun since they're touching the ball now. I think everybody has a smile on their face just because everybody is catching the ball."
This could be a high-scoring game, and Chaisson will have to back up his words and slow Ehlinger down to give his team a key win. But that’s easier said than done.
https://247sports.com/college/lsu/Article/LSU-Texas-football-Sam-Ehlinger-KLavon-Chaisson-135073397/
Gonna be a good one.
LSU may have one of their best D's ever, 3 pre-season AAs and talent at every position, with depth. ST are improved over last season. While the O is getting the attention, D & ST are good enuf to win a lot of games.
LSU returns 8 starers on O and 8 starters on D.
LSU -4 is about right playing a Top Ten team at their place. But I'm not gonna bet on this game.
LSU may have one of their best D's ever, 3 pre-season AAs and talent at every position, with depth. ST are improved over last season. While the O is getting the attention, D & ST are good enuf to win a lot of games.
LSU returns 8 starers on O and 8 starters on D.
LSU -4 is about right playing a Top Ten team at their place. But I'm not gonna bet on this game.
tejasrulz
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I went to check the LSU board and a big portion of the fans over there are like Tigerbaiter in that a win is a given.
They have a title to a thread "Is the best LSU team ever", and another thread is titled "Is this the most confident you have felt against a top ten team?"
LSU has finally discovered the forward pass after Les Miles years. Leonard Fournette blasted Les after the game since he discovered that LSU could have had a passing game to open up things for him.
A Georgia fan posted a the board and here's what he said.....
1. Tom Herman is a big game coach and loves to be the underdog. They'll be locked in and ready to go.
2. Their defense was physical at the line of scrimmage.
3. Ehlinger is good but overrated. He only threw for 169yds and I don't think Texas had a play that went over 15yds all night.
4. UGA apathy won Texas the game
I know, it's an excuse, but anyone watching could tell the Bulldogs were 100% checked out. The team's season was over after the SEC championship. It's not the Longhorn's fault that we weren't ready, but it's the truth. Also keep in mind that Texas only scored 18 points offenisvely. In addition, we were missing 4 starters on defense. Their other points came from turnovers and our punter accidentally taking a knee.
I believe the conditions for this game will be different. LSU should be able to dominate the LOS and wear them down. I wish it was us going to Austin this week to play them because I know deep down we're 2 scores better than they are. I use to live in Texas and losing that game kills me because they're such an arrogant fanbase and institution. I believe Texas is a good team capable of winning, but they were not as good as we made them look. I could tell in Kirby's pregame interview the he nor the team gave a damn about preparing for that game.
LSU 27
Texas 17
They have a title to a thread "Is the best LSU team ever", and another thread is titled "Is this the most confident you have felt against a top ten team?"
LSU has finally discovered the forward pass after Les Miles years. Leonard Fournette blasted Les after the game since he discovered that LSU could have had a passing game to open up things for him.
A Georgia fan posted a the board and here's what he said.....
1. Tom Herman is a big game coach and loves to be the underdog. They'll be locked in and ready to go.
2. Their defense was physical at the line of scrimmage.
3. Ehlinger is good but overrated. He only threw for 169yds and I don't think Texas had a play that went over 15yds all night.
4. UGA apathy won Texas the game
I know, it's an excuse, but anyone watching could tell the Bulldogs were 100% checked out. The team's season was over after the SEC championship. It's not the Longhorn's fault that we weren't ready, but it's the truth. Also keep in mind that Texas only scored 18 points offenisvely. In addition, we were missing 4 starters on defense. Their other points came from turnovers and our punter accidentally taking a knee.
I believe the conditions for this game will be different. LSU should be able to dominate the LOS and wear them down. I wish it was us going to Austin this week to play them because I know deep down we're 2 scores better than they are. I use to live in Texas and losing that game kills me because they're such an arrogant fanbase and institution. I believe Texas is a good team capable of winning, but they were not as good as we made them look. I could tell in Kirby's pregame interview the he nor the team gave a damn about preparing for that game.
LSU 27
Texas 17
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The Story of Tom Herman, Ed Orgeron and LSU's Wild 2016 Coaching Search
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BEST BETS FOE
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By ROSS DELLENGER
September 02, 2019
AUSTIN, Texas — Ed Orgeron’s phone buzzes. He stirs from bed. It is 1:30 in the morning. The text message is from, of all people, his former boss and colleague, Lane Kiffin. It is short and, boy, is it sweet.
Tom Herman leaning to Texas.
You’re probably wondering how in the heck we got here, on Nov. 25, 2016, when the interim coach at LSU is awaken in the middle of the night by the Alabama offensive coordinator with news about the Houston coach on the Texas head coaching job. Well, that takes some explaining. It is part of the 2016 LSU football coaching search novella. This is no different than any other coaching search story. They are all crazy, their clandestine meetings, secret flights and intense negotiations. They shape the future of multi-million dollar programs, attract the attention of snooping reporters and captivate a legion of passionate fans. This particular coaching search pitted two college football bluebloods, LSU and Texas, both desperately craving a return to glory and hunting for the man to get them there. It just so happened that for a small window of time in November 2016 they were both chasing the same man: Tom Herman.
This Saturday night, here in the heart of Texas, under the bright lights of Darrell K Royal Stadium, the results of that coaching search will for the first time ever be captured in a single frame. LSU and Texas will battle on one field as top-10 teams in Week 2 of what each believes is its championship season. How they got here, Orgeron at LSU and Herman at UT, is the product of a wild week, the crescendo of an LSU coaching search that spanned two months, included a half-dozen serious candidates and involved a secret “spy” who flew across the country scouting coaches. Along the way, there was participation from one Steve Spurrier and interest from a guy named Mike Leach. There was a bizarre Thanksgiving night in College Station, Texas, a plane that never left the runway in Baton Rouge, a game that nearly cost one candidate the job and a bidding war that never materialized.
And for the first time ever, the man running the search spoke about it publicly. “Herman was the hot guy, but my thought always was if Herman didn’t work out, I’d go with Ed,” says Joe Alleva, the former LSU athletic director who spoke to Sports Illustrated for this story. “Ed Orgeron was always the guy I really wanted to be the head coach. A lot of people here wanted to pursue the hot name, which was Herman, so we pursued him.
“We were going to fly over there and meet he and his wife,” Alleva continues. “If things went well, he probably would have gotten the job. I got a call from his agent, and he didn’t want to meet. I was done with it. That was it. And I don’t think you can write what I told him.”
Houston is playing UConn on Sept. 29, 2016. On the field is a man in non-partisan apparel scouting the game not for a particular player but for a specific coach: the man captaining the Cougars, Tom Herman. Five days before, LSU had lost at Auburn in a last-second debacle to drop to 2–2, the program fired Les Miles and named its defensive line coach as interim head coach. The school, through intermediaries, quickly contacted representatives of multiple candidates in the days following the decision to fire Miles. At that point, a two-month, 62-day and 1,500-hour long hunt commenced.
Early in the process, Joe Alleva appeared on a local radio show on which a host asked him about a search committee, and he famously replied, “I am the search.” There is some truth to his comment. During this search, Alleva cut out his closest confidantes and at least two high-level athletic administrators, Verge Ausberry and Eddie Nunez, along with mega boosters, all of them kept in the dark. Information was only shared with three members of the LSU Board of Supervisors and school president F. King Alexander, four men who made up a five-man search committee. Almost three years later, a sixth member comes to light: a traveling scout of coaching candidates.
“He was my spy,” Alleva cackles. The guy on the field at the Houston-UConn game was Alleva’s spy. That person remains nameless, but according to Alleva, he was a trusted veteran of college football from the coaching search firm industry. In addition to his spy, Alleva had another helper: Steve Spurrier. The two have a healthy friendship that dates back to their days at Duke in the 1980s. “I’d call him about candidates and get his opinion,” Alleva says.
Alleva’s spy attended four more games that season, scouting then-West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen and Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy when the Cowboys hosted the Mountaineers on Oct. 29. Two days before that, the man traveled to Pittsburgh to scout Virginia Tech coach Justin Fuente in the Hokies’ game against the Panthers. As for Herman, the man scouted him three times. Six weeks after watching the Cougars beat UConn, he saw Herman’s squad upset then-No. 3 Louisville on Nov. 17. In his final scouting assignment, the spy saw Houston’s loss at Memphis on Black Friday, a game that ended about 20 hours before LSU would name its next head football coach. It would not be the man the spy was scouting, the one school officials pursued for two months, the guy who danced seriously with them on Thanksgiving week, a slim offensive guru who reminded many of the next Urban Meyer. In fact, it would be virtually the exact opposite: a barrel-chested Cajun man who had never even been a coordinator, his expertise only on defense.
Kelly Orgeron returned from dinner with bad news for her husband. LSU had offered its head coaching job to Jimbo Fisher. “Everybody,” she told Ed Orgeron, “was talking about it at dinner.” This was Wednesday night, a day before LSU played at Texas A&M in what many thought would be Ed Orgeron’s final game as coach of the Tigers. The Orgerons and more than 200 others—players, administrators, coaching staff, parents—spent that night in the team hotel. It was buzzing with talk of Fisher, a sort of long lost son for the Tigers. Fisher has in the past expressed his affection for LSU, where he served as offensive coordinator for seven years and has twice been seriously in the mix to be the Tigers head coach. He interviewed for the job to replace Nick Saban in 2005 and was the clear choice to potentially replace Miles in 2015.
Earlier in the day, just before the team took flight for College Station, Texas, a Baton Rouge radio host, Charles Hanagriff, had reported on air information that he thought at the time was public knowledge. “I had been told from somebody I trusted that if they would prepare an offer to Jimbo, he was willing to come,” says Hanagriff, still a host on that radio station, ESPN 104.5 FM. By the time the team landed in Texas, the rumblings about Fisher had reached a fever pitch, so much so that Orgeron noticed pockets of players and staff members whispering and gesturing to their phones, none brave enough to tell the man in charge the news. Team meetings that night in the hotel were a mess. The swirling rumors were not only that Fisher was coming but that he planned to keep on staff LSU’s current receivers coach, Dameyune Craig, one of Fisher’s former quarterbacks at Auburn and a guy who now works for Fisher at Texas A&M. “There were guys on our staff talking about this and that and where these guys are going,” says Orgeron. “They never said it in front of me, but you can tell it was going on.”
Joe Alleva and others are here to set the record straight about Fisher. In 2016, Alleva had one phone call with Fisher’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, early in the search process. They never spoke again. In the end, he was not a serious candidate, partly because of his price tag: $7.5 million a year over seven years, committee members say. New Orleans businessman Stephen Perry, a board member who served on that search committee, describes a “fateful moment” during the search when decision-makers agreed not to pursue Fisher. “We loved Jimbo and thought he was a great guy, but we felt like the program at Florida State was in a downward spiral. And what the agent was asking for…” Perry says trailing off. Committee members told no one of this decision. In fact, they allowed the Fisher rumors to fester and even sometimes fueled it as a smokescreen to negotiate with their real candidate.
On Wednesday, a day before LSU played Texas A&M, reports from The Shreveport Times and ESPN about an offer to Fisher were wrong, committee members now say. Behind the scenes, school officials were in intense negotiations with Trace Armstrong, the agent of Herman. At some point that week, Alleva and committee members scheduled an interview in Houston for that Saturday morning with the coach. Through deep talks with Armstrong, the school had met Herman’s requests, and a contract was readied. “We had numbers worked out with Tom,” Alleva says. Some sources claim an offer was extended, and that Herman had verbally agreed. Alleva vehemently disputes that. The price for Herman was $5 million a year, Perry says. “We never had a deal, but we were both very seriously dancing,” Alleva says.
All of this would soon change, mostly because of the outcomes of two games in a span of 18 hours. On Thanksgiving night, Orgeron-led LSU, despite mounting distractions, crushed Texas A&M, 54–39, and then the next day, TCU beat Texas and Charlie Strong, 31–9. The latter resulted in Strong’s firing. Texas needed a coach. “I didn’t get much sleep that weekend,” says Mike Perrin, then UT’s athletic director. “Tom was a clear choice for me. You’ve got to remember I lived in Houston for 43 years. Even living in Austin, I took the Houston paper. I knew what he’d done there.”
Herman went 22–4 in two seasons at Houston, including a 13–1 mark in 2015.
MATTHEW VISINSKY/ICON SPORTSWIRE/GETTY IMAGES
Inside his San Antonio home, Robert Dullnig watched LSU go up by two touchdowns on Texas A&M in the first half of their Thanksgiving night bout in College Station. As a lifelong Texas fan and player, that made him happy. However, the ESPN bottom line ticker on the screen made him sad: Tom Herman and LSU close to finalizing a deal. On his couch, Dullnig, a ranch broker and Longhorns booster, sprung into action. “I texted and called other Longhorns fans and boosters who were more influential than me saying, ‘We’ve got to get this guy. We can’t let LSU get him,’” Dullnig recalls.
Herman and Texas have history. Though he’s from Ohio, Herman had spent 12 years of his career coaching college in the state, including two years in Austin as a graduate assistant under Mack Brown. Herman was linked so close with the UT program that many around LSU felt like the school’s pursuit of him was futile. “It was a waste of time,” says one high-placed source at LSU. “He was always going to Texas.” It just took a wake-up call, in the form of that LSU-Herman news. Chip Brown, a Texas beat writer for the last 25 years, originally broke the story at Horns247.com 15 minutes before the Tigers kicked off against the Aggies. How was a story about LSU uncovered by a reporter covering UT? Folks at LSU believe they know. “The agent,” says Joe Alleva, referring to Armstrong, Herman’s representative. “He was working both sides of the deal. I’m not stupid. I knew that was a possibility. That’s what agents are supposed to do, but Herman was playing that same game too.” Armstrong declined to comment when reached. “I felt confident in my reporting,” Brown says in an interview last week. “I think Tom Herman really wanted to see if Texas was going to open. There were a group of big money guys who had let (school president Gregory) Fenves and Perrin know that Tom should be really high on the list.” Fenves declined comment through an assistant. Herman declined comment Monday after his news conference.
For Alleva and committee members, the shroud covering their plan was yanked free. They were angry and concerned. “We began to not trust Tom Herman,” Stephen Perry, the committee member, says. By that time, LSU’s serious pursuit of Herman was four days old, beginning after LSU’s 16–10 loss to Florida at home on the previous Saturday. Hours after that game, during a committee meeting inside LSU’s athletic administration building, the five-man group decided on their top two candidates, Herman and Orgeron. At the start of this search, they sought a sitting head coach who leaned toward offense with a history of molding quarterbacks, the program’s bugaboo. Over two months, Alleva whittled a list of what was at first more than a dozen candidates.
There was Stanford coach David Shaw, who made it known early that he was not interested. There was Texas Tech’s Kliff Kingsbury, but some were concerned how his defense and Air Raid scheme would fit into the SEC. There were at least two candidates in particular who expressed their interest in the position: North Carolina’s Larry Fedora and Washington State’s Mike Leach. Alleva spoke to Colorado’s Mike MacIntyre, as the two worked together at Duke, but things were never too serious. Among them all, Justin Fuente, in his first season at Virginia Tech, was maybe the most alluring candidate for decision-makers, but his buyout was enormous.
Some feel Dana Holgorsen had the inside track on the job early on in the process, but there were off-the-field concerns with the then-Mountaineers coach. Alleva says he was never serious about Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy, and Utah’s Kyle Whittingham, while intriguing to decision-makers, could have presented a cultural fit problem in south Louisiana. “I often asked myself, ‘Is he better than Coach O?’” Alleva says of these candidates. “My answer was ‘No.’” Alleva wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Stanley Jacobs, a former LSU basketball player who was then on the LSU Board of Supervisors but not on the search committee, agrees with Alleva, a man he’s heavily criticized over the years. “If it came to the full board, I had already made up my mind,” Jacobs says. “If it was not Orgeron, I was going to be vocally opposed.”
So pessimistic about his chances at landing the full-time job at LSU, Ed Orgeron cleared out the temporary on-campus hotel room he occupied while LSU’s interim coach on Black Friday morning, just minutes after completing an interview with Joe Alleva for the full-time gig, his team’s win over the Aggies 12-hours old. While packing up, Orgeron’s phone rang. It was Alleva. “You think Lane Kiffin’s going to really come?” the athletic director asked.
Kiffin, at the time, was the offensive coordinator at Alabama, preparing the Crimson Tide for the SEC championship game. Part of Orgeron’s pitch to Alleva was that Kiffin, his old friend and colleague, would be the Tigers offensive coordinator if he was named the coach. Back on the phone, Orgeron reaffirmed with his boss that Kiffin would come if he didn’t land a head coaching job. “‘Really?” Alleva responded. “Man, you, Lane Kiffin, (defensive coordinator) Dave Aranda… that would be a great combination.” Orgeron’s connection to Kiffin and his impressive interview with Alleva were not the only things that began to sway committee members. The result of the Thanksgiving night game and the postgame player reaction were significant factors. Committee members either read or heard for themselves the booming chants from the postgame locker room. “Keep Coach O! Keep Coach O!” players shouted.
Even before that game, Alleva and committee members were smitten with Orgeron. In fact, two independent sources with knowledge of the ordeal believe that LSU planned to immediately announce Orgeron as its full-time coach if he were to have beaten Florida. Alleva does not confirm that, but says, “I think that would have made it an easier sell to the public. If he had won the Florida game, there would have been less people concerned about him. People concerned about him were concerned because of what he’d done at Ole Miss, but to me, there are a lot of great coaches who didn’t succeed at their first attempt at being a head coach.”
Starting with LSU’s win over A&M and into Black Friday, things began to swing Orgeron’s way. Not only did Tom Herman’s Houston team lose as touchdown favorites to Memphis, but Austin Thomas and Derek Ponamsky, two support staff members who helped build Orgeron’s case for the full-time job, began reaching out to influencers at the school, stumping for their candidate. The Orgeron camp had realized earlier that it was No. 2. “Within one minute of the interview with Joe, I knew we were second,” Orgeron says. “I told Derek and Austin to leave the room. I looked at Joe and said, ‘Joe, you know I’m the right man for the job at LSU. You know in your belly, I’m the right man for the job. I look forward to being the head coach of the LSU Tigers.’ And I walked out.”
Orgeron had built a rapport with Alleva. By this time, the two were tight. “Ed knew he had to stay close to Joe,” says a source within the LSU athletic department. “O is a recruiter. He knows how to get it done.” Through everything that week, one of Orgeron’s most distinct memories is the plane ride back from College Station after the romping win over the Aggies. This was supposed to be a happy flight. Instead, minutes after takeoff, someone approached Orgeron to deliver some bad news: Tom Herman has been offered the LSU job. Orgeron, always one with quick whit, remembers his reply exactly: “Great! Last night it was Jimbo. Tonight it’s Tom. Tomorrow is our day. Here we go!”
Tom Herman arrived to the Houston football facility on Friday night after an unhappy flight from Memphis. Awaiting him were dozens of TV and print reporters gathered out front of the UH facility, staking out the exit and Herman’s car, parked in the front lot. At some point during this period, a staff member moved Herman’s vehicle to the back of the building, where the coach and his family loaded into the car and drove to a meeting with Texas officials, about 12 hours before he was expected to gather with those from LSU. The Longhorns had entered the dance, the exact thing that LSU decision-makers sought to avoid.
Earlier in the process, Alleva had told Herman’s agent, Armstrong, that he would not be involved in a bidding war, especially not with Texas. Little did LSU officials know, but serious talks between UT and Armstrong began almost immediately after Texas’s loss to TCU, around 7 p.m. that Friday night, Perrin says. While LSU officials were preparing for a flight to Houston to potentially offer their job to Herman, the negotiations between UT and the coach stretched into the wee hours of Saturday morning. Amid them, Ed Orgeron rolled over to see that text from Lane Kiffin.
During negotiations on that Friday and Saturday morning, Perrin knew of LSU’s interest in Herman. “I mean, I read Twitter too,” says Perrin, 73, who has returned to Houston working as an attorney. Perrin was impressed with Herman, and the two sides seemed to reach a deal just before or right around 5 a.m., according to all accounts. Armstrong then phoned Alleva. “He was trying to get me into a bidding war,” Alleva recalls. Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the call say Alleva hung up on Armstrong after expressing his displeasure in two words. “Joe told him, ‘F--- you,’” the source says. At least one of the LSU committee members was en route to the airport to fly to Houston’s Hobby Airport, the rendezvous spot, when Armstrong made the call. “Joe was pissed,” says a friend of Alleva’s, “and he had every right to be.”
In the days afterward, Texas fans celebrated. “As I said to all my LSU friends,” says Pat Frost, a longtime Texas supporter based in San Antonio, “‘We got a bigger checkbook.’”
After Orgeron took over as LSU's interim (and later permanent) coach in September 2016, the Tigers closed the season 6–2.
STEPHEN LEW/ICON SPORTSWIRE/GETTY IMAGES
Ed Orgeron hung out the window of his black GMC Yukon while driving well over the speed limit on I-12, from his family home in Mandeville to Baton Rouge. That text from Lane Kiffin proved true. About four hours after receiving that message, just after 5 a.m., Joe Alleva called with a message: meet me at the LSU football operations building at 7:30 a.m. “I was rolling, baby, playing Born on the Bayou, windows open,” Orgeron says. “I get there at 7:29. Joe is sitting in front of the Tiger (statue), right there. He says, ‘Well, you want the job or not?’ I took him and bear hugged him and he said, ‘Put me down, you big son of a gun!’”
LSU announced the hiring of Orgeron at 11:59 a.m., then held a noon news conference. Texas announced the hiring of Herman at 4:07 p.m. before introducing the coach at a news conference the next day. Almost three years later, the two programs meet on the gridiron for a game that many UT supporters believe is the most highly anticipated home contest in more than a decade. The Longhorns have been stuck in a Texas-sized rut. They’ve lost at least four games in each of the last nine seasons. The Tigers haven’t endured as rough of a stretch, and while they’ve got the country’s third-longest bowl streak intact, LSU hasn’t played for a conference championship since 2011. Both coaches seem to have their programs on upward trajectories. Orgeron has led LSU to nine and 10 wins. Herman, after a 7–6 first season, marched his squad to the Big 12 championship game last year.
Is Texas back? “This is the most momentum the program has had since 2009,” says Dullnig, the former Texas receiver and rancher, “but every time we get momentum, we shoot ourselves in the foot. Will Herman work out? Probably still too early to tell. There is some caution. Every time we feel good over the last 10 years something has jumped up and slapped us in the face and knocks us back to reality.” Will that thing be LSU? The Tigers return a veteran quarterback, are loaded with athletic freaks on defense and will supposedly unveil what’s been heralded as a new-look, no-huddle spread offense. “We had two different conversations about this whole topic last year, about the decisions we made,” says Stephen Perry, the LSU board member. “We all feel like we all made the best decision. If we could recreate time and have Tom Herman, Jimbo or O, it would be unanimous that we would have taken Coach O all over again. There’s an absolute belief we made the best pick.” Ausberry, LSU’s executive deputy athletic director, declined comment on the search, only telling SI, “It was a process we went through and had a few candidates out there. At the end of the day, we stuck with the right one.”
Both sides feel the same. “I’m confident that we made the right decision,” says Perrin, who will be in attendance Saturday. “I’m pleased that Tom is leading our program.” Joe Alleva will not be in Austin. The school split with its longtime athletic director in the spring. Alleva this week moved to Florida with his wife Annie to be closer to their children and grandchildren. He plans to potentially dabble in some consulting work or maybe teach a class. The Tigers replaced Alleva with LSU alum Scott Woodward, whose hire further intertwines LSU with the state of Texas. Woodward spent the previous three years at Texas A&M and while there, hired Fisher to a 10-year, $75 million contract. He did what LSU officials say they refused to do in 2016. “This worked out well for everybody,” Perry says. “It worked out well for Texas, it worked out well for Texas A&M and it worked out well for LSU.”
Orgeron benefited the most. He knows this. He doesn’t hide from it. If the Texas job had never opened and the Tigers met with their No. 1 man, Herman, not Orgeron, would likely be leading the LSU football team into a hostile environment in Austin on Saturday night. “Everything happened for a reason,” Orgeron says. “You could see it all happen. It was like the perfect storm. I’m sitting there that Friday on the TV watching all those scenarios coming together. You could see all the dominoes fall all over the place.”
Thirty-three months, 1,016 days and 24,380 hours late, LSU and Tom Herman will finally have their meeting.
https://www.si.com/college-football/2019/09/02/tom-herman-texas-lsu-ed-orgeron
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- The paths of Tom Herman and Ed Orgeron were intertwined long before their Longhorns and Tigers meet on Saturday for a major Week 2 clash in Austin.
By ROSS DELLENGER
September 02, 2019
AUSTIN, Texas — Ed Orgeron’s phone buzzes. He stirs from bed. It is 1:30 in the morning. The text message is from, of all people, his former boss and colleague, Lane Kiffin. It is short and, boy, is it sweet.
Tom Herman leaning to Texas.
You’re probably wondering how in the heck we got here, on Nov. 25, 2016, when the interim coach at LSU is awaken in the middle of the night by the Alabama offensive coordinator with news about the Houston coach on the Texas head coaching job. Well, that takes some explaining. It is part of the 2016 LSU football coaching search novella. This is no different than any other coaching search story. They are all crazy, their clandestine meetings, secret flights and intense negotiations. They shape the future of multi-million dollar programs, attract the attention of snooping reporters and captivate a legion of passionate fans. This particular coaching search pitted two college football bluebloods, LSU and Texas, both desperately craving a return to glory and hunting for the man to get them there. It just so happened that for a small window of time in November 2016 they were both chasing the same man: Tom Herman.
This Saturday night, here in the heart of Texas, under the bright lights of Darrell K Royal Stadium, the results of that coaching search will for the first time ever be captured in a single frame. LSU and Texas will battle on one field as top-10 teams in Week 2 of what each believes is its championship season. How they got here, Orgeron at LSU and Herman at UT, is the product of a wild week, the crescendo of an LSU coaching search that spanned two months, included a half-dozen serious candidates and involved a secret “spy” who flew across the country scouting coaches. Along the way, there was participation from one Steve Spurrier and interest from a guy named Mike Leach. There was a bizarre Thanksgiving night in College Station, Texas, a plane that never left the runway in Baton Rouge, a game that nearly cost one candidate the job and a bidding war that never materialized.
And for the first time ever, the man running the search spoke about it publicly. “Herman was the hot guy, but my thought always was if Herman didn’t work out, I’d go with Ed,” says Joe Alleva, the former LSU athletic director who spoke to Sports Illustrated for this story. “Ed Orgeron was always the guy I really wanted to be the head coach. A lot of people here wanted to pursue the hot name, which was Herman, so we pursued him.
“We were going to fly over there and meet he and his wife,” Alleva continues. “If things went well, he probably would have gotten the job. I got a call from his agent, and he didn’t want to meet. I was done with it. That was it. And I don’t think you can write what I told him.”
Houston is playing UConn on Sept. 29, 2016. On the field is a man in non-partisan apparel scouting the game not for a particular player but for a specific coach: the man captaining the Cougars, Tom Herman. Five days before, LSU had lost at Auburn in a last-second debacle to drop to 2–2, the program fired Les Miles and named its defensive line coach as interim head coach. The school, through intermediaries, quickly contacted representatives of multiple candidates in the days following the decision to fire Miles. At that point, a two-month, 62-day and 1,500-hour long hunt commenced.
Early in the process, Joe Alleva appeared on a local radio show on which a host asked him about a search committee, and he famously replied, “I am the search.” There is some truth to his comment. During this search, Alleva cut out his closest confidantes and at least two high-level athletic administrators, Verge Ausberry and Eddie Nunez, along with mega boosters, all of them kept in the dark. Information was only shared with three members of the LSU Board of Supervisors and school president F. King Alexander, four men who made up a five-man search committee. Almost three years later, a sixth member comes to light: a traveling scout of coaching candidates.
“He was my spy,” Alleva cackles. The guy on the field at the Houston-UConn game was Alleva’s spy. That person remains nameless, but according to Alleva, he was a trusted veteran of college football from the coaching search firm industry. In addition to his spy, Alleva had another helper: Steve Spurrier. The two have a healthy friendship that dates back to their days at Duke in the 1980s. “I’d call him about candidates and get his opinion,” Alleva says.
Alleva’s spy attended four more games that season, scouting then-West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen and Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy when the Cowboys hosted the Mountaineers on Oct. 29. Two days before that, the man traveled to Pittsburgh to scout Virginia Tech coach Justin Fuente in the Hokies’ game against the Panthers. As for Herman, the man scouted him three times. Six weeks after watching the Cougars beat UConn, he saw Herman’s squad upset then-No. 3 Louisville on Nov. 17. In his final scouting assignment, the spy saw Houston’s loss at Memphis on Black Friday, a game that ended about 20 hours before LSU would name its next head football coach. It would not be the man the spy was scouting, the one school officials pursued for two months, the guy who danced seriously with them on Thanksgiving week, a slim offensive guru who reminded many of the next Urban Meyer. In fact, it would be virtually the exact opposite: a barrel-chested Cajun man who had never even been a coordinator, his expertise only on defense.
Kelly Orgeron returned from dinner with bad news for her husband. LSU had offered its head coaching job to Jimbo Fisher. “Everybody,” she told Ed Orgeron, “was talking about it at dinner.” This was Wednesday night, a day before LSU played at Texas A&M in what many thought would be Ed Orgeron’s final game as coach of the Tigers. The Orgerons and more than 200 others—players, administrators, coaching staff, parents—spent that night in the team hotel. It was buzzing with talk of Fisher, a sort of long lost son for the Tigers. Fisher has in the past expressed his affection for LSU, where he served as offensive coordinator for seven years and has twice been seriously in the mix to be the Tigers head coach. He interviewed for the job to replace Nick Saban in 2005 and was the clear choice to potentially replace Miles in 2015.
Earlier in the day, just before the team took flight for College Station, Texas, a Baton Rouge radio host, Charles Hanagriff, had reported on air information that he thought at the time was public knowledge. “I had been told from somebody I trusted that if they would prepare an offer to Jimbo, he was willing to come,” says Hanagriff, still a host on that radio station, ESPN 104.5 FM. By the time the team landed in Texas, the rumblings about Fisher had reached a fever pitch, so much so that Orgeron noticed pockets of players and staff members whispering and gesturing to their phones, none brave enough to tell the man in charge the news. Team meetings that night in the hotel were a mess. The swirling rumors were not only that Fisher was coming but that he planned to keep on staff LSU’s current receivers coach, Dameyune Craig, one of Fisher’s former quarterbacks at Auburn and a guy who now works for Fisher at Texas A&M. “There were guys on our staff talking about this and that and where these guys are going,” says Orgeron. “They never said it in front of me, but you can tell it was going on.”
Joe Alleva and others are here to set the record straight about Fisher. In 2016, Alleva had one phone call with Fisher’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, early in the search process. They never spoke again. In the end, he was not a serious candidate, partly because of his price tag: $7.5 million a year over seven years, committee members say. New Orleans businessman Stephen Perry, a board member who served on that search committee, describes a “fateful moment” during the search when decision-makers agreed not to pursue Fisher. “We loved Jimbo and thought he was a great guy, but we felt like the program at Florida State was in a downward spiral. And what the agent was asking for…” Perry says trailing off. Committee members told no one of this decision. In fact, they allowed the Fisher rumors to fester and even sometimes fueled it as a smokescreen to negotiate with their real candidate.
On Wednesday, a day before LSU played Texas A&M, reports from The Shreveport Times and ESPN about an offer to Fisher were wrong, committee members now say. Behind the scenes, school officials were in intense negotiations with Trace Armstrong, the agent of Herman. At some point that week, Alleva and committee members scheduled an interview in Houston for that Saturday morning with the coach. Through deep talks with Armstrong, the school had met Herman’s requests, and a contract was readied. “We had numbers worked out with Tom,” Alleva says. Some sources claim an offer was extended, and that Herman had verbally agreed. Alleva vehemently disputes that. The price for Herman was $5 million a year, Perry says. “We never had a deal, but we were both very seriously dancing,” Alleva says.
All of this would soon change, mostly because of the outcomes of two games in a span of 18 hours. On Thanksgiving night, Orgeron-led LSU, despite mounting distractions, crushed Texas A&M, 54–39, and then the next day, TCU beat Texas and Charlie Strong, 31–9. The latter resulted in Strong’s firing. Texas needed a coach. “I didn’t get much sleep that weekend,” says Mike Perrin, then UT’s athletic director. “Tom was a clear choice for me. You’ve got to remember I lived in Houston for 43 years. Even living in Austin, I took the Houston paper. I knew what he’d done there.”
Herman went 22–4 in two seasons at Houston, including a 13–1 mark in 2015.
MATTHEW VISINSKY/ICON SPORTSWIRE/GETTY IMAGES
Inside his San Antonio home, Robert Dullnig watched LSU go up by two touchdowns on Texas A&M in the first half of their Thanksgiving night bout in College Station. As a lifelong Texas fan and player, that made him happy. However, the ESPN bottom line ticker on the screen made him sad: Tom Herman and LSU close to finalizing a deal. On his couch, Dullnig, a ranch broker and Longhorns booster, sprung into action. “I texted and called other Longhorns fans and boosters who were more influential than me saying, ‘We’ve got to get this guy. We can’t let LSU get him,’” Dullnig recalls.
Herman and Texas have history. Though he’s from Ohio, Herman had spent 12 years of his career coaching college in the state, including two years in Austin as a graduate assistant under Mack Brown. Herman was linked so close with the UT program that many around LSU felt like the school’s pursuit of him was futile. “It was a waste of time,” says one high-placed source at LSU. “He was always going to Texas.” It just took a wake-up call, in the form of that LSU-Herman news. Chip Brown, a Texas beat writer for the last 25 years, originally broke the story at Horns247.com 15 minutes before the Tigers kicked off against the Aggies. How was a story about LSU uncovered by a reporter covering UT? Folks at LSU believe they know. “The agent,” says Joe Alleva, referring to Armstrong, Herman’s representative. “He was working both sides of the deal. I’m not stupid. I knew that was a possibility. That’s what agents are supposed to do, but Herman was playing that same game too.” Armstrong declined to comment when reached. “I felt confident in my reporting,” Brown says in an interview last week. “I think Tom Herman really wanted to see if Texas was going to open. There were a group of big money guys who had let (school president Gregory) Fenves and Perrin know that Tom should be really high on the list.” Fenves declined comment through an assistant. Herman declined comment Monday after his news conference.
For Alleva and committee members, the shroud covering their plan was yanked free. They were angry and concerned. “We began to not trust Tom Herman,” Stephen Perry, the committee member, says. By that time, LSU’s serious pursuit of Herman was four days old, beginning after LSU’s 16–10 loss to Florida at home on the previous Saturday. Hours after that game, during a committee meeting inside LSU’s athletic administration building, the five-man group decided on their top two candidates, Herman and Orgeron. At the start of this search, they sought a sitting head coach who leaned toward offense with a history of molding quarterbacks, the program’s bugaboo. Over two months, Alleva whittled a list of what was at first more than a dozen candidates.
There was Stanford coach David Shaw, who made it known early that he was not interested. There was Texas Tech’s Kliff Kingsbury, but some were concerned how his defense and Air Raid scheme would fit into the SEC. There were at least two candidates in particular who expressed their interest in the position: North Carolina’s Larry Fedora and Washington State’s Mike Leach. Alleva spoke to Colorado’s Mike MacIntyre, as the two worked together at Duke, but things were never too serious. Among them all, Justin Fuente, in his first season at Virginia Tech, was maybe the most alluring candidate for decision-makers, but his buyout was enormous.
Some feel Dana Holgorsen had the inside track on the job early on in the process, but there were off-the-field concerns with the then-Mountaineers coach. Alleva says he was never serious about Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy, and Utah’s Kyle Whittingham, while intriguing to decision-makers, could have presented a cultural fit problem in south Louisiana. “I often asked myself, ‘Is he better than Coach O?’” Alleva says of these candidates. “My answer was ‘No.’” Alleva wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Stanley Jacobs, a former LSU basketball player who was then on the LSU Board of Supervisors but not on the search committee, agrees with Alleva, a man he’s heavily criticized over the years. “If it came to the full board, I had already made up my mind,” Jacobs says. “If it was not Orgeron, I was going to be vocally opposed.”
So pessimistic about his chances at landing the full-time job at LSU, Ed Orgeron cleared out the temporary on-campus hotel room he occupied while LSU’s interim coach on Black Friday morning, just minutes after completing an interview with Joe Alleva for the full-time gig, his team’s win over the Aggies 12-hours old. While packing up, Orgeron’s phone rang. It was Alleva. “You think Lane Kiffin’s going to really come?” the athletic director asked.
Kiffin, at the time, was the offensive coordinator at Alabama, preparing the Crimson Tide for the SEC championship game. Part of Orgeron’s pitch to Alleva was that Kiffin, his old friend and colleague, would be the Tigers offensive coordinator if he was named the coach. Back on the phone, Orgeron reaffirmed with his boss that Kiffin would come if he didn’t land a head coaching job. “‘Really?” Alleva responded. “Man, you, Lane Kiffin, (defensive coordinator) Dave Aranda… that would be a great combination.” Orgeron’s connection to Kiffin and his impressive interview with Alleva were not the only things that began to sway committee members. The result of the Thanksgiving night game and the postgame player reaction were significant factors. Committee members either read or heard for themselves the booming chants from the postgame locker room. “Keep Coach O! Keep Coach O!” players shouted.
Even before that game, Alleva and committee members were smitten with Orgeron. In fact, two independent sources with knowledge of the ordeal believe that LSU planned to immediately announce Orgeron as its full-time coach if he were to have beaten Florida. Alleva does not confirm that, but says, “I think that would have made it an easier sell to the public. If he had won the Florida game, there would have been less people concerned about him. People concerned about him were concerned because of what he’d done at Ole Miss, but to me, there are a lot of great coaches who didn’t succeed at their first attempt at being a head coach.”
Starting with LSU’s win over A&M and into Black Friday, things began to swing Orgeron’s way. Not only did Tom Herman’s Houston team lose as touchdown favorites to Memphis, but Austin Thomas and Derek Ponamsky, two support staff members who helped build Orgeron’s case for the full-time job, began reaching out to influencers at the school, stumping for their candidate. The Orgeron camp had realized earlier that it was No. 2. “Within one minute of the interview with Joe, I knew we were second,” Orgeron says. “I told Derek and Austin to leave the room. I looked at Joe and said, ‘Joe, you know I’m the right man for the job at LSU. You know in your belly, I’m the right man for the job. I look forward to being the head coach of the LSU Tigers.’ And I walked out.”
Orgeron had built a rapport with Alleva. By this time, the two were tight. “Ed knew he had to stay close to Joe,” says a source within the LSU athletic department. “O is a recruiter. He knows how to get it done.” Through everything that week, one of Orgeron’s most distinct memories is the plane ride back from College Station after the romping win over the Aggies. This was supposed to be a happy flight. Instead, minutes after takeoff, someone approached Orgeron to deliver some bad news: Tom Herman has been offered the LSU job. Orgeron, always one with quick whit, remembers his reply exactly: “Great! Last night it was Jimbo. Tonight it’s Tom. Tomorrow is our day. Here we go!”
Tom Herman arrived to the Houston football facility on Friday night after an unhappy flight from Memphis. Awaiting him were dozens of TV and print reporters gathered out front of the UH facility, staking out the exit and Herman’s car, parked in the front lot. At some point during this period, a staff member moved Herman’s vehicle to the back of the building, where the coach and his family loaded into the car and drove to a meeting with Texas officials, about 12 hours before he was expected to gather with those from LSU. The Longhorns had entered the dance, the exact thing that LSU decision-makers sought to avoid.
Earlier in the process, Alleva had told Herman’s agent, Armstrong, that he would not be involved in a bidding war, especially not with Texas. Little did LSU officials know, but serious talks between UT and Armstrong began almost immediately after Texas’s loss to TCU, around 7 p.m. that Friday night, Perrin says. While LSU officials were preparing for a flight to Houston to potentially offer their job to Herman, the negotiations between UT and the coach stretched into the wee hours of Saturday morning. Amid them, Ed Orgeron rolled over to see that text from Lane Kiffin.
During negotiations on that Friday and Saturday morning, Perrin knew of LSU’s interest in Herman. “I mean, I read Twitter too,” says Perrin, 73, who has returned to Houston working as an attorney. Perrin was impressed with Herman, and the two sides seemed to reach a deal just before or right around 5 a.m., according to all accounts. Armstrong then phoned Alleva. “He was trying to get me into a bidding war,” Alleva recalls. Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the call say Alleva hung up on Armstrong after expressing his displeasure in two words. “Joe told him, ‘F--- you,’” the source says. At least one of the LSU committee members was en route to the airport to fly to Houston’s Hobby Airport, the rendezvous spot, when Armstrong made the call. “Joe was pissed,” says a friend of Alleva’s, “and he had every right to be.”
In the days afterward, Texas fans celebrated. “As I said to all my LSU friends,” says Pat Frost, a longtime Texas supporter based in San Antonio, “‘We got a bigger checkbook.’”
After Orgeron took over as LSU's interim (and later permanent) coach in September 2016, the Tigers closed the season 6–2.
STEPHEN LEW/ICON SPORTSWIRE/GETTY IMAGES
Ed Orgeron hung out the window of his black GMC Yukon while driving well over the speed limit on I-12, from his family home in Mandeville to Baton Rouge. That text from Lane Kiffin proved true. About four hours after receiving that message, just after 5 a.m., Joe Alleva called with a message: meet me at the LSU football operations building at 7:30 a.m. “I was rolling, baby, playing Born on the Bayou, windows open,” Orgeron says. “I get there at 7:29. Joe is sitting in front of the Tiger (statue), right there. He says, ‘Well, you want the job or not?’ I took him and bear hugged him and he said, ‘Put me down, you big son of a gun!’”
LSU announced the hiring of Orgeron at 11:59 a.m., then held a noon news conference. Texas announced the hiring of Herman at 4:07 p.m. before introducing the coach at a news conference the next day. Almost three years later, the two programs meet on the gridiron for a game that many UT supporters believe is the most highly anticipated home contest in more than a decade. The Longhorns have been stuck in a Texas-sized rut. They’ve lost at least four games in each of the last nine seasons. The Tigers haven’t endured as rough of a stretch, and while they’ve got the country’s third-longest bowl streak intact, LSU hasn’t played for a conference championship since 2011. Both coaches seem to have their programs on upward trajectories. Orgeron has led LSU to nine and 10 wins. Herman, after a 7–6 first season, marched his squad to the Big 12 championship game last year.
Is Texas back? “This is the most momentum the program has had since 2009,” says Dullnig, the former Texas receiver and rancher, “but every time we get momentum, we shoot ourselves in the foot. Will Herman work out? Probably still too early to tell. There is some caution. Every time we feel good over the last 10 years something has jumped up and slapped us in the face and knocks us back to reality.” Will that thing be LSU? The Tigers return a veteran quarterback, are loaded with athletic freaks on defense and will supposedly unveil what’s been heralded as a new-look, no-huddle spread offense. “We had two different conversations about this whole topic last year, about the decisions we made,” says Stephen Perry, the LSU board member. “We all feel like we all made the best decision. If we could recreate time and have Tom Herman, Jimbo or O, it would be unanimous that we would have taken Coach O all over again. There’s an absolute belief we made the best pick.” Ausberry, LSU’s executive deputy athletic director, declined comment on the search, only telling SI, “It was a process we went through and had a few candidates out there. At the end of the day, we stuck with the right one.”
Both sides feel the same. “I’m confident that we made the right decision,” says Perrin, who will be in attendance Saturday. “I’m pleased that Tom is leading our program.” Joe Alleva will not be in Austin. The school split with its longtime athletic director in the spring. Alleva this week moved to Florida with his wife Annie to be closer to their children and grandchildren. He plans to potentially dabble in some consulting work or maybe teach a class. The Tigers replaced Alleva with LSU alum Scott Woodward, whose hire further intertwines LSU with the state of Texas. Woodward spent the previous three years at Texas A&M and while there, hired Fisher to a 10-year, $75 million contract. He did what LSU officials say they refused to do in 2016. “This worked out well for everybody,” Perry says. “It worked out well for Texas, it worked out well for Texas A&M and it worked out well for LSU.”
Orgeron benefited the most. He knows this. He doesn’t hide from it. If the Texas job had never opened and the Tigers met with their No. 1 man, Herman, not Orgeron, would likely be leading the LSU football team into a hostile environment in Austin on Saturday night. “Everything happened for a reason,” Orgeron says. “You could see it all happen. It was like the perfect storm. I’m sitting there that Friday on the TV watching all those scenarios coming together. You could see all the dominoes fall all over the place.”
Thirty-three months, 1,016 days and 24,380 hours late, LSU and Tom Herman will finally have their meeting.
https://www.si.com/college-football/2019/09/02/tom-herman-texas-lsu-ed-orgeron
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Ed Orgeron and Tom Herman: How a wild Thanksgiving night in 2016 transformed LSU
Texas coach Tom Herman, left, and LSU coach Ed Orgeron
AP file photos
Ross Dellenger
Editor's Note
This is a revised version of a story The Advocate published in late November 2016. It was written by then-staff writer Ross Dellenger.
Events on and off the field on Thanksgiving night 2016 turned the tide in LSU’s coaching search and, ultimately, resulted in university leaders choosing to promote interim coach Ed Orgeron instead of negotiating with then-Houston coach Tom Herman.
LSU decision-makers used then-Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher’s talked-about candidacy as a ruse to quietly negotiate with Herman and stay ahead of the University of Texas in the chase for the 41-year-old hotshot, but the potential deal fizzled after reports on Thursday night exposed a plan the Tigers had kept shrouded for days.
Meanwhile, leaders admit that Orgeron was coaching for his job in the 2016 season finale against Texas A&M, and the result – a 54-39 drubbing at Kyle Field just five days after a home loss to Florida – pushed his candidacy to another level. LSU officials saw what one person called “powerful” locker room videos of players chanting Orgeron’s name, and they received messages from those who witnessed the emotional scene – more signs of the 55-year-old Cajun coach’s culture-changing ways that athletic director Joe Alleva spoke of Saturday.
“It turned the tide,” one source said of the Thanksgiving night events.
Several athletic department leaders and decision-makers spoke to The Advocate on a condition of anonymity regarding the search.
They specifically spoke about the furious final five days, a wild run that ended with the announcement of Orgeron’s promotion to the top job. So much happened before that celebratory news conference.
For one, a potential deal with Herman collapsed, in part because of the reports that surfaced Thanksgiving night from HornsDigest.com strongly linking Herman to the LSU job. Leaders blamed Herman’s camp for leaking the information.
Angry and frustrated decision-makers, namely Alleva, bullishly ended discussions with Herman and his agent in the wee hours of Saturday morning, refusing to be part of a bidding war with “wealthy and desperate” Texas for a guy whose camp leveraged LSU’s interest into an eventual job with the Longhorns.
“That was all orchestrated by someone, and you can figure that out,” Alleva said after Orgeron was introduced by LSU on Nov. 26, 2016, a not-so-subtle shot at Herman and his agent Trace Armstrong.
Herman was named Texas’ head coach later that day.
+10
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_r...ion_90e70398-cd15-11e9-b6bc-bb32165fccf8.html
10 things LSU fans should know about the Texas Longhorns: Key players, familiar coach, more
The search didn’t get serious until Saturday night, when leaders met after LSU's loss to Florida.
They narrowed a list of “10-12” vetted coaches to just two candidates: Herman and Orgeron. Missing from that duo is the school’s third finalist, Fisher, reported by many, including The Advocate, to be LSU’s top choice.
Discussions with Fisher’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, unfolded early during the search process, well before the true hunt for Les Miles’ replacement took place this week. LSU officials deny what many have reported – that Fisher turned down an offer. However, they admit that a deal for the coach would have cost more than $50 million in guaranteed money.
LSU officials believed that, if needed, they could have circled back to Fisher, though they knew the lofty asking price. All other vetted coaches were well behind their top three. Just beneath Orgeron, Fisher and Herman were North Carolina coach Larry Fedora, Colorado coach Mike MacIntyre and Western Michigan coach P.J. Fleck.
Leaders were prepared to name Orgeron the head coach if he were to have beaten Florida and A&M, a result that would have sent the Tigers to the Sugar Bowl. But the 16-10 loss to the Gators didn’t remove him from the picture.
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_6b019f96-cd9f-11e9-b250-f741412d2a4f.html
Triple-digit heat in Austin for LSU vs. Texas, and temps will likely be in the 90s at kickoff
Orgeron “blew away” decision-makers during an interview the day after the Texas A&M game, when he arrived equipped with two thick binders detailing his long-term plan for the program. He left that meeting feeling as if he would finish second to Herman.
A week earlier, all eyes were on Herman, a man who fit the mold in which leaders were after – a young, up-and-coming offensive-minded coach. While multiple reports about Fisher’s candidacy broke, decision-makers were focused on Herman.
“The media was barking up the wrong tree,” one source said.
“All a smokescreen,” said another.
LSU and Herman had “intense talks” over the days leading up to LSU’s game against Texas A&M. He appeared to be “extremely interested” in LSU, and Herman shot down any suggestions that he wanted to coach at Texas. At about 5 a.m. that Saturday morning, Herman or his agent told LSU leaders that he was leaning toward the Longhorns and that he’d begin discussions with the school.
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_438ea340-cd9b-11e9-8b32-07f4bcc5c860.html
Joe Burrow named SEC Offensive Player of the Week, shares honor with Tua
Alleva and other decision-makers, set to meet with Herman for the first time that Saturday in Texas, ended the negotiations. Alleva called Orgeron, and the coach sped from his Mandeville home to Baton Rouge.
The athletic director told Orgeron he’d gotten the job during a meeting in the coach’s office. Orgeron’s reaction: He picked Alleva up off of his feet.
"I tell you, before I went to bed last night, Kelly said, 'You're going to be the head coach at LSU tomorrow,'" Orgeron said. "I said, ‘Have you been reading the paper.'"
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_c5521f92-cdaa-11e9-b625-fb6d12b81ddc.html
- BY ROSS DELLENGER | RDELLENGER@THEADVOCATE.COM
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SEP 2, 2019 - 1:05 PM
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Texas coach Tom Herman, left, and LSU coach Ed Orgeron
AP file photos
Ross Dellenger
Editor's Note
This is a revised version of a story The Advocate published in late November 2016. It was written by then-staff writer Ross Dellenger.
Events on and off the field on Thanksgiving night 2016 turned the tide in LSU’s coaching search and, ultimately, resulted in university leaders choosing to promote interim coach Ed Orgeron instead of negotiating with then-Houston coach Tom Herman.
LSU decision-makers used then-Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher’s talked-about candidacy as a ruse to quietly negotiate with Herman and stay ahead of the University of Texas in the chase for the 41-year-old hotshot, but the potential deal fizzled after reports on Thursday night exposed a plan the Tigers had kept shrouded for days.
Meanwhile, leaders admit that Orgeron was coaching for his job in the 2016 season finale against Texas A&M, and the result – a 54-39 drubbing at Kyle Field just five days after a home loss to Florida – pushed his candidacy to another level. LSU officials saw what one person called “powerful” locker room videos of players chanting Orgeron’s name, and they received messages from those who witnessed the emotional scene – more signs of the 55-year-old Cajun coach’s culture-changing ways that athletic director Joe Alleva spoke of Saturday.
“It turned the tide,” one source said of the Thanksgiving night events.
Several athletic department leaders and decision-makers spoke to The Advocate on a condition of anonymity regarding the search.
They specifically spoke about the furious final five days, a wild run that ended with the announcement of Orgeron’s promotion to the top job. So much happened before that celebratory news conference.
For one, a potential deal with Herman collapsed, in part because of the reports that surfaced Thanksgiving night from HornsDigest.com strongly linking Herman to the LSU job. Leaders blamed Herman’s camp for leaking the information.
Angry and frustrated decision-makers, namely Alleva, bullishly ended discussions with Herman and his agent in the wee hours of Saturday morning, refusing to be part of a bidding war with “wealthy and desperate” Texas for a guy whose camp leveraged LSU’s interest into an eventual job with the Longhorns.
“That was all orchestrated by someone, and you can figure that out,” Alleva said after Orgeron was introduced by LSU on Nov. 26, 2016, a not-so-subtle shot at Herman and his agent Trace Armstrong.
Herman was named Texas’ head coach later that day.
+10
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_r...ion_90e70398-cd15-11e9-b6bc-bb32165fccf8.html
10 things LSU fans should know about the Texas Longhorns: Key players, familiar coach, more
The search didn’t get serious until Saturday night, when leaders met after LSU's loss to Florida.
They narrowed a list of “10-12” vetted coaches to just two candidates: Herman and Orgeron. Missing from that duo is the school’s third finalist, Fisher, reported by many, including The Advocate, to be LSU’s top choice.
Discussions with Fisher’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, unfolded early during the search process, well before the true hunt for Les Miles’ replacement took place this week. LSU officials deny what many have reported – that Fisher turned down an offer. However, they admit that a deal for the coach would have cost more than $50 million in guaranteed money.
LSU officials believed that, if needed, they could have circled back to Fisher, though they knew the lofty asking price. All other vetted coaches were well behind their top three. Just beneath Orgeron, Fisher and Herman were North Carolina coach Larry Fedora, Colorado coach Mike MacIntyre and Western Michigan coach P.J. Fleck.
Leaders were prepared to name Orgeron the head coach if he were to have beaten Florida and A&M, a result that would have sent the Tigers to the Sugar Bowl. But the 16-10 loss to the Gators didn’t remove him from the picture.
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_6b019f96-cd9f-11e9-b250-f741412d2a4f.html
Triple-digit heat in Austin for LSU vs. Texas, and temps will likely be in the 90s at kickoff
Orgeron “blew away” decision-makers during an interview the day after the Texas A&M game, when he arrived equipped with two thick binders detailing his long-term plan for the program. He left that meeting feeling as if he would finish second to Herman.
A week earlier, all eyes were on Herman, a man who fit the mold in which leaders were after – a young, up-and-coming offensive-minded coach. While multiple reports about Fisher’s candidacy broke, decision-makers were focused on Herman.
“The media was barking up the wrong tree,” one source said.
“All a smokescreen,” said another.
LSU and Herman had “intense talks” over the days leading up to LSU’s game against Texas A&M. He appeared to be “extremely interested” in LSU, and Herman shot down any suggestions that he wanted to coach at Texas. At about 5 a.m. that Saturday morning, Herman or his agent told LSU leaders that he was leaning toward the Longhorns and that he’d begin discussions with the school.
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_438ea340-cd9b-11e9-8b32-07f4bcc5c860.html
Joe Burrow named SEC Offensive Player of the Week, shares honor with Tua
Alleva and other decision-makers, set to meet with Herman for the first time that Saturday in Texas, ended the negotiations. Alleva called Orgeron, and the coach sped from his Mandeville home to Baton Rouge.
The athletic director told Orgeron he’d gotten the job during a meeting in the coach’s office. Orgeron’s reaction: He picked Alleva up off of his feet.
"I tell you, before I went to bed last night, Kelly said, 'You're going to be the head coach at LSU tomorrow,'" Orgeron said. "I said, ‘Have you been reading the paper.'"
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_c5521f92-cdaa-11e9-b625-fb6d12b81ddc.html
MikeV73
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Take this guy’s logic and knowledge base, he knows “the truth” regarding last year’s Georgia team. Guessing he is on staff at Georgia or is in on all team meetings.
primal defense
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Rabalais: On this LSU-Texas game, and why did Terry Bradshaw and Baker Mayfield bash Sam Ehlinger?
Notes on a golf scorecard Monday while thinking I would like to bring my golf clubs to Austin this weekend for the LSU-Texas game, but I’m afraid they might melt (the high Saturday is supposed to be 102) …
… Folks in Austin say this is the biggest non-conference showdown Texas has hosted since Ohio State came calling in 2006. A pair of top-10 teams (LSU was No. 6 in the preseason AP poll, Texas was No. 10). ESPN’s “College GameDay” is going there for the first time in a decade. This is a big deal for all concerned. The Longhorns are certainly feeling once again that they are headed back to the top. Exhibit A was Texas’ stunning 28-21 upset of Georgia in the Allstate Sugar Bowl. A victory that prompted Longhorns quarterback Sam Ehlinger to mug for ESPN’s cameras and shout, “We’re baaaack!” There is no way to really quantify it, but I’m among those of the opinion that the Sugar Bowl meant more to Texas than it did to Georgia, whose College Football Playoff hopes were dashed by that gutting come-from-ahead loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game. That same Georgia team was dominated 36-16 back in October by LSU, albeit in Tiger Stadium and not at a neutral bowl site.
… A writer for the Austin newspaper wrote Monday that Texas has nothing to fear from LSU. Well, maybe not fear, but the ESPN Football Power Index implies the Longhorns should be a trifle concerned. ESPN says LSU has an 80 percent chance to win Saturday. Maybe those numbers are skewed early in the season with only one game aside to pick from. Then again, maybe ESPN’s FPI computer thinks the Longhorns are, to use Texas-ish term, all hat and no cattle.
… By the way, an FPI simulation of the NFL season that ESPN.compublished Monday picked the Saints to beat the Los Angeles Chargers 40-33 in Super Bowl 54.
… Texas coach Tom Herman said LSU’s defense will be the best his Longhorns have faced, with “NFL players at pretty much every position.” Apparently, some of his players don’t think so, at least when it comes to one contentious defensive unit. Texas defensive backs were sporting “There’s only one DBU” T-shirts in warmups before last Saturday’s 45-14 victory over Louisiana Tech. Texas has put out great players at a lot of positions, but recent history leans to LSU on this one, at least in a head-to-head count. Since 2010, LSU has had 14 defensive backs drafted, with 10 of them still on NFL rosters. Texas has had nine defensive backs drafted in that same time, with five on NFL rosters. Then again, this whole “DBU” thing is about as overplayed as a freshman cornerback trying to jump a pass route. Is it LSU? Is it Florida? Is it Ohio State? Is it Texas? Does anyone really still care at this point?
… That said, Texas has this formation called Cowboy in which the Longhorns put eight defensive backs on the field. They pulled it out a couple of times against Louisiana Tech. That should be a sight if they go back to it against LSU.
… During his Monday news conference, Herman was asked that tired old question about the way Ed Orgeron talks. Herman, it must be said, was rather diplomatic, replying: “It’s unique, his language, certainly.” The question just isn’t funny anymore, insulting and implying a lack of intelligence on Orgeron’s part. Orgeron just got a contract extension and a raise to $4 million a year. If you pay me that much, you can snicker all you like about how I talk.
… Speaking of Ehlinger, a lot will be on his shoulder pads to produce yards and points Saturday, with the Longhorns being critically thin with only one true scholarship running back available. For some reason, he’s taken his shots from different corners. Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback and Louisiana Tech alum Terry Bradshaw said before the Bulldogs played Texas that, “He ain’t that good.”
And over the summer, Cleveland Browns and former Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield blasted Ehlinger, too. “He couldn’t even beat Lake Travis, so I don’t really care (about) his opinion on anything winning,” Mayfield said back in June. “He doesn’t like me, and I hope he knows I don’t like him either.” It doesn’t help that Mayfield prepped at Lake Travis High School in Austin while Ehlinger starred at Westlake. “The two best quarterbacks to come out of there are Drew Brees and Nick Foles. Sam can stay down there at Texas.” OK, so maybe Ehlinger isn’t Brees or Bradshaw or a Heisman winner like Mayfield. But he certainly isn’t bad. He threw for 276 yards and four touchdowns against Louisiana Tech. He threw for 25 touchdowns and rushed for a school quarterback record 16 last year, his 41 combined touchdowns behind only Colt McCoy’s 45 in 2008 in Texas history.
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_5989a504-cddd-11e9-99d3-73cae013a15b.html
Notes on a golf scorecard Monday while thinking I would like to bring my golf clubs to Austin this weekend for the LSU-Texas game, but I’m afraid they might melt (the high Saturday is supposed to be 102) …
… Folks in Austin say this is the biggest non-conference showdown Texas has hosted since Ohio State came calling in 2006. A pair of top-10 teams (LSU was No. 6 in the preseason AP poll, Texas was No. 10). ESPN’s “College GameDay” is going there for the first time in a decade. This is a big deal for all concerned. The Longhorns are certainly feeling once again that they are headed back to the top. Exhibit A was Texas’ stunning 28-21 upset of Georgia in the Allstate Sugar Bowl. A victory that prompted Longhorns quarterback Sam Ehlinger to mug for ESPN’s cameras and shout, “We’re baaaack!” There is no way to really quantify it, but I’m among those of the opinion that the Sugar Bowl meant more to Texas than it did to Georgia, whose College Football Playoff hopes were dashed by that gutting come-from-ahead loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game. That same Georgia team was dominated 36-16 back in October by LSU, albeit in Tiger Stadium and not at a neutral bowl site.
… A writer for the Austin newspaper wrote Monday that Texas has nothing to fear from LSU. Well, maybe not fear, but the ESPN Football Power Index implies the Longhorns should be a trifle concerned. ESPN says LSU has an 80 percent chance to win Saturday. Maybe those numbers are skewed early in the season with only one game aside to pick from. Then again, maybe ESPN’s FPI computer thinks the Longhorns are, to use Texas-ish term, all hat and no cattle.
… By the way, an FPI simulation of the NFL season that ESPN.compublished Monday picked the Saints to beat the Los Angeles Chargers 40-33 in Super Bowl 54.
… Texas coach Tom Herman said LSU’s defense will be the best his Longhorns have faced, with “NFL players at pretty much every position.” Apparently, some of his players don’t think so, at least when it comes to one contentious defensive unit. Texas defensive backs were sporting “There’s only one DBU” T-shirts in warmups before last Saturday’s 45-14 victory over Louisiana Tech. Texas has put out great players at a lot of positions, but recent history leans to LSU on this one, at least in a head-to-head count. Since 2010, LSU has had 14 defensive backs drafted, with 10 of them still on NFL rosters. Texas has had nine defensive backs drafted in that same time, with five on NFL rosters. Then again, this whole “DBU” thing is about as overplayed as a freshman cornerback trying to jump a pass route. Is it LSU? Is it Florida? Is it Ohio State? Is it Texas? Does anyone really still care at this point?
… That said, Texas has this formation called Cowboy in which the Longhorns put eight defensive backs on the field. They pulled it out a couple of times against Louisiana Tech. That should be a sight if they go back to it against LSU.
… During his Monday news conference, Herman was asked that tired old question about the way Ed Orgeron talks. Herman, it must be said, was rather diplomatic, replying: “It’s unique, his language, certainly.” The question just isn’t funny anymore, insulting and implying a lack of intelligence on Orgeron’s part. Orgeron just got a contract extension and a raise to $4 million a year. If you pay me that much, you can snicker all you like about how I talk.
… Speaking of Ehlinger, a lot will be on his shoulder pads to produce yards and points Saturday, with the Longhorns being critically thin with only one true scholarship running back available. For some reason, he’s taken his shots from different corners. Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback and Louisiana Tech alum Terry Bradshaw said before the Bulldogs played Texas that, “He ain’t that good.”
And over the summer, Cleveland Browns and former Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield blasted Ehlinger, too. “He couldn’t even beat Lake Travis, so I don’t really care (about) his opinion on anything winning,” Mayfield said back in June. “He doesn’t like me, and I hope he knows I don’t like him either.” It doesn’t help that Mayfield prepped at Lake Travis High School in Austin while Ehlinger starred at Westlake. “The two best quarterbacks to come out of there are Drew Brees and Nick Foles. Sam can stay down there at Texas.” OK, so maybe Ehlinger isn’t Brees or Bradshaw or a Heisman winner like Mayfield. But he certainly isn’t bad. He threw for 276 yards and four touchdowns against Louisiana Tech. He threw for 25 touchdowns and rushed for a school quarterback record 16 last year, his 41 combined touchdowns behind only Colt McCoy’s 45 in 2008 in Texas history.
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_5989a504-cddd-11e9-99d3-73cae013a15b.html
MikeV73
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Mayfield is probably still taunting rival middle school teams and touch football opponents from when he was 5 years old. Stay classy!
North Texas Golfer
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We're probably going to hear all week about the Herman to LSU crap. The problem is that they don't what they are talking about because Tom was NEVER going to LSU.
primal defense
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Ranking Heisman Contenders' Performances After Week 1 of College Football
5. Sam Ehlinger, Texas
6 OF 10
Sam EhlingerEric Gay/Associated Press
Preseason Odds: 20-1
Stats (vs. Louisiana Tech): 28-of-38, 276 yards, 4 TD, 0 INT, 169.4 PER; 8 carries, 34 yards
The Good
Sam Ehlinger made light work of a Louisiana Tech passing defense that was solid last year, holding all 13 opponents below 300 passing yards with a 16-to-13 TD-to-INT ratio for the season. The Longhorns quarterback completed all five of his pass attempts on the opening touchdown drive and moved the ball at will for most of the afternoon. Texas was up 38-0 late in the third quarter after Ehlinger took his last snap of the day.
Ehlinger is the only quarterback on this list who did not have at least one completion of 30 or more yards, but there was no need for deep passes against the Bulldogs. The Longhorns were able to just march down the field 10-25 yards at a time. It won't be long before he's airing out bombs to Collin Johnson and Co.
The four touchdowns matched a career high set last November against Texas Tech.
The Bad
Ehlinger did more with his legs than Adrian Martinez did for Nebraska, but it was a little strange to not see him run one in, given four of Texas's six touchdowns were from less than seven yards out. His 16 rushing touchdowns from last season was one of the biggest reasons he was a preseason Heisman candidate. As weird and as nonsensical as this sounds, it would have been more encouraging if one of his four passing touchdowns had come on a tuck-and-run instead.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2851845-ranking-heisman-contenders-performances-after-week-1-of-college-football#slide6
5. Sam Ehlinger, Texas
6 OF 10
Sam EhlingerEric Gay/Associated Press
Preseason Odds: 20-1
Stats (vs. Louisiana Tech): 28-of-38, 276 yards, 4 TD, 0 INT, 169.4 PER; 8 carries, 34 yards
The Good
Sam Ehlinger made light work of a Louisiana Tech passing defense that was solid last year, holding all 13 opponents below 300 passing yards with a 16-to-13 TD-to-INT ratio for the season. The Longhorns quarterback completed all five of his pass attempts on the opening touchdown drive and moved the ball at will for most of the afternoon. Texas was up 38-0 late in the third quarter after Ehlinger took his last snap of the day.
Ehlinger is the only quarterback on this list who did not have at least one completion of 30 or more yards, but there was no need for deep passes against the Bulldogs. The Longhorns were able to just march down the field 10-25 yards at a time. It won't be long before he's airing out bombs to Collin Johnson and Co.
The four touchdowns matched a career high set last November against Texas Tech.
The Bad
Ehlinger did more with his legs than Adrian Martinez did for Nebraska, but it was a little strange to not see him run one in, given four of Texas's six touchdowns were from less than seven yards out. His 16 rushing touchdowns from last season was one of the biggest reasons he was a preseason Heisman candidate. As weird and as nonsensical as this sounds, it would have been more encouraging if one of his four passing touchdowns had come on a tuck-and-run instead.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2851845-ranking-heisman-contenders-performances-after-week-1-of-college-football#slide6
Bogey
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