re: 8 years with Les.....what are your thoughts....

I was underwhelmed by the first impression. His start on the sidelines was similarly underwhelming as in his first are second game he tried to call a time out with the clock stopped at a very important juncture of the game and one of the sideline extras had to check and stop him from doing it. I cringed.

It has taken me some time to get past that first impression and his ongoing issues with articulating.

I really thought 2008 and 2009 were the beginning of what I feared would be a slow downward spiral. I thought there were signs of a program a bit out of control. I to this day think those signs were legit issues.

That continued at the beginning of 2010. It was pretty ugly going into that Florida game. That ball bouncing our way on the fake FG was huge. I truly believe environment has a significant affect on performance and had that ball bounced wrong and we lost, it would have gotten very ugly in B.R.

But it went our way, the win energized the team and fan base and to Les's credit, he's kept it together better than I ever thought he could.

He gets credit from me for that. I can honestly say that 8 years ago I thought he was gonna be over his head here. While at times he has, for the most part he's handled the enormity of it.

I still have concerns and I'm certainly not one of the ring-kissers that think Les is a calculated genius who plays a dim-witted Columbo to fool his enemies. I think he truly is what you see.

But he's gotten the job done relatively speaking. I have never once called for his firing and I never will. He's exceeded in actual production what my perception of him would dictate that production to be.

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recruiting has been great (second only to Saban)
-player conditioning has been excellent (Moffitt)
-player development has been good (less freaks like Kiki, Matheu, Montgomery, etc)
-program has been run mostly clean with high graduation rates
-winning percentage is excellent and stadium sells out every game (as good as it gets)
-a National Championship and 2 SEC titles

THE BAD
-95+ % of all games are close (includes good and bad teams)
-coaching staff decisions have been marginal at best (less Chief) ie. Maleveto, Stud as OC with no OL coaching, etc (position coaches have been hit/miss)
-team discipline has been poor with preseason arrests that have negatively affected the season (somewhat common with elite players...happens other places too)
-game day coaching has been poor (strategy and use of players... Has gotten worse over the last 2 years)
-game day organization and discipline has been poor (penalties, delay of game, busted plays, use of time outs, etc)

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- I concur with your assesment. Only Nick Saban has done more with somewhat equal recruiting. Great overall record by Miles ! He has run a very clean program ! Kids seem to like playing for Les.

Les averaging over 10 wins per season ! Overall, the grade that I would give Les for the past 8 years would be an A- .

Only LSU fans would complain.

Can't do any better than Les Miles

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discipline has been poor (penalties, delay of game, busted plays, use of time outs, etc)

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this is probably my biggest complaint. outside of that I LOVE LES as our head coach

1). Has left, in my opinion, 3 BCS titles on the table due directly to his coaching/misuse of player talents

2). The aforementioned asst coaching and game management gaffes

3). Excellent recruiter

4). Players coach

5). Extremely arrogant coaching style

6). Overall winning program

7). Average hire that has turned out to be above average based on results to date

8). After 8 years has program viewed outside the Tiger fandom as perhaps 4th or 5th best in the conference.

9). Has guided the program to the pinnacle of the sport in 1 of 8 seasons.


Overall positive but will always be thought of as underachieving given player talent brought in.

Greatest 8 year span in the history of LSU football

And that's a fact Jack

My main thought about him as a coach (rather than as a man) is that his offensive philosophy allows teams with lesser talent to hang around much closer in games than they should.

I love the man. Helleva coach. Recruits great players and great coaches to come to LSU. Few people I'd want over him. Media loves him, he's always on ESPN which is great exposure for LSU. He runs a clean program and our GPA is only second to Vanderbilt. However the only thing I hate is that you can usually expect a brain fart every game & usually plays close games which is okay with me if we win.

If we go far this year, which I believe we will, I hope most of the neg-miles fans shut the frick up