re: Charlie McClendon coached his last game for LSU on this date in 1979

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Charlie McClendan was a poor man’s Les Miles. Good riddance.

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His tenure was a whole lot of “meh” probably didn’t deserve 17 years of the job with the record he had.

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Charlie McClendon was a poor man’s Les Miles.

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There were several similarities:

*They both followed coaches who were hard to live up to in the fans eyes.
*They both had some issues with the spoken language and said some unintentionally humorous lines and phrases quite often.
*They both had trouble beating legendary Bama coaches.
*Both were considered conservative offensively.

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Miles won a National Championship

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My Dad told me when I first became passionate as a youngster that the 1969 Tiger team was the best of his lifetime...this was in the 70's. I say that to say Miles won a national title with two losses, I would be interested to see if that 1969 team had the same system as in Les's Day if that team could have played for and won the title. In our only loss that year to Ole Miss, we could have kicked a FG to tie but Mac chose to go for the win instead he did not want the game to end in a tie. Would we have won that game in OT??

Fun to speculate.

We lost that one game to Archie Manning, on the road, 26-23, IRRC. We got our payback the following year when he played with a cast on his arm, and we completely destroyed them.

That 1969 team was slated to go to the Cotton Bowl, but the Irish lifted their self imposed no bowl policy at the last minute, and the Cotton Bowl tossed us aside. So, if you don’t hate ND for any other reason, use this one. That 1969 team had an unbelievable defense. Mac’s loyalty to his OC Charlie Peavy was his downfall, much like Jim Mora and Carl Smith. Wasted defenses because of anemic offenses, and stuck in the same league with dynasties built by HOF coaches (Bear and Bill Walsh)

Charlie Mac was a good, but not great, LSU coach. Win or lose his teams played solid, competitive football and his teams always played great defense. Sort of like your "grandfather's Kirk Ferentz". And like with that coach, LSU fans grew complacent with 8-4 teams every year.

I really think the reason Mac eschewed the FG in that game was that he probably felt a short slant pass to his tight end was a better bet than have a less-than-reliable Lumpkin attempt a 40 yard FG.

LSU almost certainly gone to the Cotton Bowl with a 9-0-1 record. At the time of the LSU- Ole Miss game Notre Dame already had a loss (to Purdue) and a tie (with USC) on its record. LSU's remaining schedule that year was vs. a subpar Alabama team and two home games against lowly Ms. State and Tulane teams.

I was working at TGI Friday's listening to the USC game on the radio. Great game, although we lost.

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there weren’t many LSU games on TV then.

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The old Tigervision telecast with Greg Bowser as the on field guy. Usually had a terrible picture also

It was a facemask, but also a false start that wasn't called.