re: Rabalais: Despite baggage, ex-LSU coach Les Miles deserves college Hall of Fame shot

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How many championships would Les have won if Saban stayed in Miami? 2007, 2011 for sure. 2012? 2015?

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2011 100%
2012 50-60% UGA was no joke, almost beat Bama in SECCG obviously winner would crush ND
2015 5-10% it’s easy to say they lost spirit after Bama but 2012 bounced back after heartbreaker vs Bama and won out, 2015 was not nearly as talented imo, may not beat Clemson even if they make playoffs.

Other note is if Saban does stay in pros then the team is very different do we lose guys like Landon Collins and Cam Robinson?

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I think most reasonable LSU fans agree he belongs in the hall of fame.

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Not me.

He could have been had he completed 2011 and not doubled down and gone full dinosaur while his biggest competitor continued to adapt and outrecruit and outcoach him.

He was too loyal (by his own admission) to poorly performing coordinators. Meddled with said coordinators (im so sure Crowton, Krag, Stud, and Cam all coincidentally daydreamed of running inside power toss out of the I formation when they were young assistants.)

We were extremely extremely extremely lucky to win his only national championship.

He became more and more unserious and embraced the stupid goofball rep as time went on.

For an OL guy, our OL play was never consistently good enough.

He could recruit and for the most part hire. He did a more than admirable job keeping the train rolling after Saban left. My favorite thing to remember about him is his fearlessness in attacking the recruiting trail and exuding confidence in those first months. We could have hired way worse.

But the fall off after that championship and subsequent falloff after 1-9-12 (not to mention the creepy shite he was doing off the field) plus adding a ton of losses to his resume at kansas keeps him out for me.

Les Miles was a good coach, but not a hall of fame coach.

LSU HoF? La Sports? Sure.

HOF or not, I don’t care. Les Miles thought the LSU fans & media were ignorant & stupid. He was making fun of us when he spoke gibberish.

Les loved the attention, and now I hope the IRL creep is miserable being treated like a pariah.

Also, great job at Kansas, Les. That sure looked like HOF coaching.

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Les Miles thought the LSU fans & media were ignorant & stupid. He was making fun of us when he spoke gibberish.

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I actually have a bit of a different take on that. I think what you saw and heard from Les is largely who he was. I saw enough in situations where he did not have to play that role and he was in my view pretty much the same person.

But I think he realized the perception folks had of him and exaggerated that character to some degree as a defense mechanism. But I've never bought and never will, the idea he was calculating genius, playing the Columbo character and fooling all of us. But I do believe that's how he saw himself.

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because he brought in elite talent but underachieved with it because his schemes and game planning were abysmal, particularly on offense.

Yes, he won a lot of games, but most coaches could do that just on player talent alone.

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He won a national championship. If every coach we ever have for the rest of history gets us to two national championships per decade and wins one, I'll be happy with that.

I'm not going to hate on him for having good teams/talent. He was the guy that brought in the talent. If most coaches could do it, why don't they? Because they can't bring in the talent, and he did.

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He should've done SO MUCH MORE with it. And running a Medieval offense was a crime.

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It was an outdated offense but it's also revisionist history because despite being old school, the offense was absolutely steamrolling teams the good years. In the 2011/12 season that everybody loves to hate on so much because of the national championship, we romped 6-7 ranked team, not counting the game of the century, which was obviously an all timer. The national championship didn't make me forget how awesome and fun that was. I personally enjoyed blowing out Oregon, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, etc. I don't care that we didn't throw for 4-5k yards, we were winning games.

Just me personally, but I also enjoyed beating the out of conference ranked opponents week one. That was fun. Almost forget what that feels like.

If he were a Hof coach, he would have done better than 3-18 at Kansas and 28-21 at Oklahoma State.

LSU is a HOF program and made Les Miles. He didn’t make LSU but he seemed to have forgot that and thought he was untouchable. At that point he made a choice that he was right and evolving/adapting was not the way to go. All he had to do was not let 2015 spiral like it did and he’d still be around.

He lost his touch.

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This is dumb. We were one of the most elite teams in college football during his run and we had a national championship 3 years after he left, indicating he didn’t leave us in irreparable shambles.

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If Les is HOF then so is Coach O.

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Les is HOF then so is Coach O.

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Coach O literally has 1 great season of head coaching. Wtf are you talking about?

He had 1 great year at lsu then proceeded to run lsu into the ground creating the worst lsu football program in over 20 years. Saban inherited more talent in 2000 than Kelly did at lsu.
His ole miss tenure is the worst tenure ever at a program full of shite tenures.

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Les had many faults but he coached in more national title games than major bowl games coached in by hall of famer Mike Bellotti.

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Ed Orgeron coached in more major bowl games and national championship games than Bellotti too, was just as much (or more?) of a "CFB personality" as Les was, and put together by far the best team of all of them. Both Les and O's careers ended as trainwrecks, both on and off the field.

Does that mean O should be in consideration as a HOF coach as well? (obviously not)

Point being, your program's floor and ceiling needs to be taken into account relative to your achievements, and I'm not sure there was another program that had more built-in advantages than LSU in the BCS / pre-transfer portal era after Saban left. It's why Mike Leach is going to get in before Les ever does and rightfully so.