McCay's Most Recent Update Indicates No New DC by Peach

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On To The Coaching Rumors: LSU head football coach Les Miles has done a tremendous job of keeping things quiet on the staff front, and at this point it seems pretty clear it's going to stay that way for a while. Monday, former Clemson defensive coordinator Vic Koenning, who had been reported to be the odds-on favorite to join LSU's staff in a similar capacity, was announced as the new DC at Kansas State, his alma mater. Koenning is apparently going to Manhattan to be groomed as the eventual replacement for Bill Snyder, the once and current coach there, in another one of those head-coach-in-waiting deals. But the story on the Koenning deal at LSU goes that he was pressuring Miles to pull the trigger and hire him because he had a line on the K-State thing, and Miles refused to bite. Both sides came to a conclusion that Koenning going to Kansas was the best move for all concerned.

You can take that however you like; if you're a big Koenning fan it means Miles was indecisive and blew a shot at improving his coaching staff. If your perspective is a little different you'd probably applaud Miles for not being pressured into limiting his options when bigger fish are still out there.

As of right now, it's unlikely LSU will have any staff changes before the Chick-Fil-A Bowl on December 31 - though my sources still unanimously say that changes are coming and will include more than a couple of coaches. But Miles is very jealously protecting his recruiting class, which as currently constituted contains a large number of players who could make an immediate impact on LSU's program and certainly lift the Tigers above 7-5 next year (which will happen anyway regardless of what Miles does with the staff), and the one thing which is very obvious regardless of this year's performance is that this staff is jam-packed with excellent recruiters.

So the key here for LSU fans is patience - and that's something in short supply. Fan enthusiasm levels are clearly on the wane, as evidenced by the tepid sales of bowl tickets by LSU so far - the ticket office reports they've sold around 11,000 of their 15,000 tickets, and while they'll likely sell out it's pretty clear this is going to be a road game in the Georgia Dome against Georgia Tech. I would surmise that news of a new defensive coordinator for the bowl game would goose those sales some, but that's not exactly Miles' highest priority right now. He's got better than three million dollars a year riding on making the right decisions for his coaching staff, and he knows 7-5 doesn't cut it here. Furthermore, nothing that happens in the bowl game is going to affect his job. If he gets waxed in Atlanta and then comes back and wins 12 games next year, nobody will care what happened on New Year's Eve.

So right now the plan appears to be to ride it out with the current group through the bowl game, bust some rear ends on recruiting and reel in the top class in the nation and then make staff changes after national signing day. Whether that plan holds up or not is a question; Miles is giving the departing coaches time to land elsewhere rather than outright fire anybody, but in that scenario you have to figure that when a guy gets a new job they'll expect him to start right away. So I expect to see a couple of coaches bleed off the LSU staff in January, and whether Miles makes a hire before Signing Day or not is a good question. Remember that if the Tigers are down a coach, Miles gets the NCAA restrictions lifted as to how much contact he can have with recruits.

Anyway, while I'm told there is a handle on this process and it's all going to be done in an orderly manner, it's without question going to make for a silly season among the local media. In today's Advocate, Randy Rosetta has a piece following an interview with Phil Bennett, who has nothing to say about the LSU defensive coordinator job. My guess is Bennett has nothing to say because he's not involved in the job; his name is not one which has come up through my sources at all. Greg Robinson's name has, though I'm told Robinson is looking for a year off before he even thinks about getting back into coaching after a disastrous run as the head man at Syracuse.

DeWayne Walker's name is extremely prominent from what I understand; Walker, who is currently UCLA's defensive coordinator, was the guy Miles wanted to get last year but he couldn't close the deal. Walker is hell-bent on becoming a head coach, though, and though he is apparently a finalist for the San Diego State job along with Dennis Franchione, if he doesn't get that position he might well rethink his attachment to the West Coast. UCLA was 4-8 this year, thanks largely to an absolutely abysmal offense which kept Walker's defense on the field all game long, and it doesn't seem like the Bruins are going to get light-years better any time soon. And while he might get the San Diego State job, if he doesn't I'm not sure he's going to dramatically increase his profile in the next couple of years coaching on 6-6 or 7-5 UCLA teams.

At LSU, though, a good defensive coordinator has the talent and resources to win a national championship in almost any given year. Bo Pelini proved that you can ride that to a head coaching gig at a major school, and Derek Dooley, Will Muschamp and Jimbo Fisher have all profited greatly from their time here. So Miles might have a better set of selling points this year for Walker.

Another coach whose name is being discussed as a possibility for the defensive coordinator position among the insiders I've talked to is George Edwards, the inside linebackers coach for the Dolphins. Edwards was a prominent candidate for the defensive coordinator position at LSU when Miles first took the job here; he was coaching linebackers at Cleveland at the time and opted to join Nick Saban's staff in Miami rather than come to LSU (and he's subsequently stayed in Miami through the change to Cam Cameron and now Tony Sparano). Edwards coached with Miles on Dave Campo's Dallas staff in 1998, so he has a connection just like Walker does (Walker was on the Oklahoma State staff with Miles in 1995). His motivation for coming to LSU would be that he'd get to be a defensive coordinator again, which he hasn't had a chance to do since he held that post with the Redskins in 2003.

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