One of the best descriptions about how the Orgeron hiring process went down.

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Imagine how embarrassing it must have been the night of Nov. 25, 2016 for officials from LSU. Not only did they have their sights on Tom Herman, they had gone all-in on hiring him away from Houston.

But then, as reports of Herman nearing a deal with LSU began to surface, Texas officials made their move. The final decision to fire Charlie Strong came at some point during Texas’ 31-9 loss to TCU that day, and within hours the Herman flirtation with LSU came to an end.

At the end of the day, LSU athletics director Joe Alleva got played. Hey, it happens. The decision to pursue Herman was the right one for LSU. If he preferred to go to Texas, so be it. Nothing you can do.

But rather than take a breath, hit the reset button and start the coaching search for Les Miles’ replacement all over again, LSU was humiliated and went into panic mode. The next morning, on Nov. 26, Alleva called Ed Orgeron and offered him the head coaching job.

Ed Orgeron. To be the head coach. Of the LSU Tigers.

There were two problems with that. First, hiring Orgeron is ridiculous enough. Though it was a decade ago, his tenure at Ole Miss was a train wreck of legendary proportions, so handing him the keys to a top-10 program was reckless at best. Some people are good assistants but bad head coaches. Everyone who watched the Ole Miss debacle saw that Orgeron fell into that category.

But second, and perhaps more important, LSU made this decision when it didn’t need to.
After the Herman humiliation, a competent athletics director would have slept it off, taken the emotion out of it, called a search firm the next morning and gotten back to work on a list of the best candidates. Orgeron was always going to be there for LSU, whether the search took another week or another month. Nobody else was going to hire him to be a head coach. He could have been the fallback option to the fallback option.

Furthermore, giving him an ironclad contract that the school couldn’t get out of quickly or inexpensively was just bad business by LSU. Contrast that with Missouri and Barry Odom, who accepted a deal that could allow the school to make a change for $1.8 million this year, and you see Alleva’s folly. LSU had leverage over Orgeron but played the entire situation last November as if he was the only available date to the prom.

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