Russell Shepard in Sporting News (on CLM)

SN: How accurate is the public’s perception of Coach Miles?

Shepard: He’s very mild-mannered. Aggressive. And the last thing I would truly have to say, he’s a winner. And that’s not just speaking about football. The man lost his sister, went to the funeral. To go to your sister’s funeral and come back the same day and speak to all of us about academics, about summer workouts, about the next things for us. He’s a winner in life. We have a high graduation rate. We don’t have a lot of problems with us in the community. He accepts his role, that he’s a father figure for a lot of the young men on this team. A lot of us have no idea, don’t have a father. He substitutes for that. He’s just a winner.

SN: I get all that. But people connect with him with the crazy quotes, the hat, the eating grass. How does all that fit in?

Shepard: It fits into it because he takes a lot of distractions off us. That’s one thing he’s told us throughout the whole process. When I was recruited, I remember him telling me, ‘I’m going to put as much pressure on me as I can so that you guys can just go out and play football.’ ... Those things, he doesn’t do those on purpose. He doesn’t wake up and say, ‘I’m going to eat some grass. I’m going to do this and do that.’ But by his personality, it’s intended to take the pressure off of us. I mean, look at us. One thing about him at LSU, we haven’t had the poster child of Tebow, or Mark Ingram. Patrick Peterson was a great football player, and pretty much the face of the program. But coach wants to limit the attention around him and us so we can just go play.