re: How good was Mike Miley

Yes, he did go to East Jefferson. He was also a pretty good basketball player and a good guy.

Mike was an excellent football, baseball, and basketball player at Airline Park Playground ( Now known as Miley Playground )

Mike was such a good baseball player that he played 11 and 12 year old baseball when he was only 10.

Back when mike Miley played baseball for LSU they had no official bat boys much less bat ladies. Never forget when a friend asked me to join him in being a bat boy for several games. Mike Mikey was the only player I remember as he was such a good player.
The crowd and stadium was so weak back in the day - we have come a long way baws

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jwp475

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What a great article.

Mike autographed my baseball glove at the "baseball clinic" at Pete Goldsby Field.

Fleeting moment but he seemed genuine.

Seems like we've had more than our fair share of athletes dying too young.

Thank you jwp475 for posting that article. I was a sophomore in 1973 and saw every home game (except Alabama) and the loss to Tulane in New Orleans (the old Tulane stadium on Willow Street). That was the first loss to Tulane in like 25 years. The irony that LSU was QB’d by a New Orleans native.

The Alabama game was on Thanksgiving night televised on national TV. And that was a big thing back then when college football was shown only on network TV. I believe it was ABC. I told my parents that I was not coming home staying to be at the game in person (Tiger stadium). My father said “if you don’t come home, you better get a good paying job as I’m not paying your tuition any longer”. I went home. They lost 21-7. So for the second year in a row, undefeated LSU lost to Alabama in November.

The team fell apart losing to Tulane and then Penn State in the Orange Bowl 16-7. So frustrating as Miley drove the team the length of the field to take a 7-0 lead. And he was throwing the ball. After that drive, they went conservative and basically gave up. The article talks about Miley’s frustration with the play calling.

I live in NY now but went to the Florida game in 2019. I drove to campus using Highland Road. As I approached campus, my first thought was that of Mike Miley. He was an outstanding athlete and while I didn’t know him based on this article an outstanding person.

Better Baseball player - just a freak athlete.

Miley never got to realize his full potential on the football field. He was a one-man gang at East Jeff, but as LSU's starting QB he was stymied by mediocre receivers (leading WRs were Norman Hodgins and Ben Jones) and an overrated offensive line (which was eaten alive by Mark Olivari and the Tulane pass rush in the 14-0 loss in New Orleans). If you were from New Orleans, that night was a nightmare, but it was far from only Miley's fault.

I once saw him (batting left-handed...he was a switch-hitter) hit a home run at old Alex Box that landed on Nicholson Drive and one-hopped into the football parking lot. He played the shortstop position with perfection, sort of an old-school type player who played with a tobacco chaw in his cheek.

It became more and more obvious as the 1974 baseball season went on that Mike wasn't going to remain at LSU, especially not to play quarterback. Charlie Pevey was Charlie McClendon's offensive coordinator, and he never could figure out how to best utilize Miley's exceptional skills.
In baseball Mike appreciated coach Jim Smith (he even visited Smith on the day of his tragic accident), but he realized that there was nothing more he could gain at LSU. The Angels drafted him #1 (10th overall) that summer.
It's kind of ironic that the year after Mike left, the Tigers had their best team (40-16) in more than a decade, won the SEC and went to the NCAA tournament for the first time.
The football program, always slow to adapt under McClendon, had trouble recovering after Miley left. Instead of abandoning plans to switch to the Veer offense to better fit Miley, Pevey and Charlie Mac stuck with it with Carl Otis Trimble as the starting QB. The Tigers were a combined 15-16-2 in the first three years after Mike Miley left.
I'm pretty sure that Mike never married, but his fiance or girlfriend at the time was named Glenda and she was so hot we used to kid that she was why his batting average was 50 points lower than it should be.

I don't know what kind of quarterback Miley would have been had he chosen to stay one more year. After all, even when he had Bert Jones, McClendon couldn't figure out how to best use his quarterback.

In baseball, for perspective consider this:
After his senior year at East Jefferson High, Miley was drafted in the first round (24th overall) of the 1971 MLB draft. He was selected a few spots ahead of George Brett and Mike Schmidt. Mike turned down the Reds' offer to attend LSU. Three years later, he was picked in the first round again.

I remember attending his funeral. He was buried in the Garden of Memories on Airline Hwy in Metairie. Hundreds of people attended his funeral and the story led off the Channel 4 evening news.

When Miley went pro Charlie Mac went to a 2 QB system after that. He never wanted to be in a position of relying on 1 QB. That’s why Bert Jones rotated with Paul Lyons and Woolley rotated with Ensminger