I am no Trump fan but what O said about the POTUS after the team visit to the White House was simply polite and should not have offended anyone. SI seems to be saying the team racial strife of last summer was caused by those remarks. Woodward seemed to fall all over himself to accommodate the black players but the reporter says the strife created was the reason for the poor season.

quote:
But the losses on the field are a direct result of the off-the-field problems, sources claim. The 5–5 season came only after a turbulent summer in Baton Rouge, where players, as they did at many other programs after a police officer murdered a Black Minneapolis man named George Floyd, staged a march across campus to protest social injustice and support the Black Lives Matter movement. At LSU, it took a different turn.

Two weeks before the march, Orgeron appeared on a Fox News segment where the host asked him repeated questions about the post-championship trip to the White House and his thoughts on then-President Donald Trump. He said he “loved” Trump and that “he’s doing a fantastic job.” Amid the pandemic and in an election year, it was a startling comment for the leader of a largely Black football team during one of the most divisive times in the country’s history.

Word about the television comments reached the team. One former player even weighed in on Twitter. Orgeron is a “great man,” but he is “blind to everything else,” defensive end K’Lavon Chaisson tweeted.

A childhood friend of Orgeron and a longtime LSU booster defends the coach.

“They asked him if Trump treated him good and he said yeah, Trump treated him good,” the man says. “I mean, what are you supposed to say?” The friend acknowledges that “it all went downhill from there.”

A couple of weeks later, LSU players staged their march. A former player’s parent described the march as more of a player “revolt” as anger within the team swelled over the coach’s comments and inaction. JaCoby Stevens, then a senior safety, told players inside the locker room that they would not play football for Orgeron until “we get this fixed,” a source recalls.

Without their coach, the players then marched to the school president’s office, where Orgeron later arrived, emerging from a Black SUV with Woodward and then holding a team meeting at the site. Despite the glowing public portrayal of the meeting, those who attended describe it differently. One source says it was Woodward’s first piece of real “evidence” that “the job is too big for [Orgeron].”

Nearly every person who spoke to SI described that day—Aug. 28, 2020—as the date in which the coach “lost” his football team. “They really f----- up all the social justice stuff last year,” says one former player. “There’s no getting the team back after that.”

“The players believed in their heart that this president [Trump] is causing harm to them and their culture,” says another source. “Whether you believe it or not, you can’t go on there.”

How much should one pay to support a group of young men that lay down on the team over something like that? Clearly there is no gratitude for the opportunity to play for LSU.

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