Part 4:
Part 3 ended with Gus Tinsley's firing after a very uncharacteristic 7 year,
less than average run at LSU. Vaught's Top 10 teams had begun to slaughter him
and ole Gus was gone after the '54 season.
Paul Dietzel, a tall, blonde offensive line coach from Army was hired as LSU's
next HC. Dietzel was greeted by probably Vaught's best team to date in 1955- a
team that was named the nation's best by one ranking service after that year.
And Paul would have his troops ready to play. As a matter of fact, LSU would
lead 17-14 going into halftime. But the final score would be another lopsided
46-17 drubbing and Paul's eyes were opened. He learned alot from that one game.
LSU had a pretty good 1st team, but Ole Miss had 3 teams that were better. He
noticed that the conditioning of the Rebels was also better. But there was a 3rd
reason Ole Miss was superior to LSU- the kind of players Ole Miss recruited.
Tinsley had gotten his pick of the best HS athletes from La. and the LSU roster
was full, every year with the biggest names in that state. John Ferguson, long
time LSU radio announcer said "Ole Miss had these tall, rangy, long-waisted
athletes and LSU had short legged, barrel-chested guys". They may have been
supermen in La. HS football, but they couldn't compete with Vaught's bigger
boys.
So Paul studied Vaught's program and later would confess that "Ole Miss is
responsible for the success we had at LSU". He began recruiting tall rangy HS
QB's and FB's just like Vaught did and found that many would grow into OT's and
DT's. He put together 3 good teams and called them his "White Team", "Go Team"
and the famous "Chinese Bandits". This was another public relations stunt that
worked.
He even found out some of Vaught's secret conditioning habits and copied them.
In a pos tseason All-Star g ame he found out from some Ole Miss players that the
entire Ole Miss team ran 20 50 yard dashes in full gear at the end of every
practice. At the beginning of the '56 season, he had his Tigers run 21 50 yard
dashes at the end of every practice.
But recruiting great college football players was the main lesson he learned
from Vaught. Recruiting was the thing. Vaught was the 1st college coach in
America to hire an assistant coach solely to handle recruiting and he hired one
of the best ever at evaluating talent- Tom Swayze. Dietzel soon followed suit
and hired one for LSU.
Vaught would beat Dietzel in '56 and '57 but the games got closer and closer.
The crowd noise level had always been very high at Tiger Stadium for the Ole
Miss game since Vaught became the HC but as LSU got better and better under
Dietzel the noise level went up and up for "The Game".
But Vaught remained supremely confident whenever he and his team ent ered Tiger
Stadium. Although Ole Miss always brought a very large # of fans, the LSU fans
were always larger in # and made noise that could only be described as
"deafening". Vaught would sometimes tell his younger more nervous players that
we had more fans there than LSU and prove it by intentionally running out of the
tunnel at the same time as the Tigers at the beginning so that no one could tell
the difference.
By 1957, Dietzel's Tigers had improved greatly and Vaught barely beat them
14-12. Vaught would later say that up until that year, he knew he could beat LSU
because they hadn't had a great defense. Vaught saw the potenial and # of young,
talented players Dietzel had assembled for that game and knew that in the
future, the Ole Miss/LSU game would be a blood bath. And he was right on.