This is a Tremendous Loss

Full disclosure - I have been attending LSU football games since the mid-1960's. I drive 925 miles round-rip to almost all home football games. I've supported every LSU coach (football, basketball & baseball). I was a big Les Miles supporter, but even I thought it was time for a change 2 years ago after we were promised one thing and delivered something different.

I was not happy about the Coach O hire and thought we settled on a coach that nobody else was after, but I have tried to be a Coach O supporter. However, I just don't get it. He needs a teleprompter to speak to the media and the fans. He over uses the word "tremendous" when describing every player on the the team. Tremendous means "very great in amount, scale, or intensity." He uses euphemisms to try to incite the fan base ("we will play with energy" "one team one heartbeat").

He cites statistics at his press conference and never speaks off the cuff. He is always on script. It is as if someone gives him a notebook or a binder before he speaks to public. (irony intended)

I am sure he is a very nice guy and I am sure he has several fans that want him to succeed, but last night was a prime example of why i feel that LSU made a mistake in hiring him. We are getting the same "speak" that Les said. Remember, I was a Les Miles fan.

"We are holding back the playbook." [don't you want to practice all of your plays against mediocre teams?]

"We are playing freshman." [Les Miles played more freshman each year than almost every program in the country, except possibly TCU]

"We lost too many starters to the NFL." [sound familiar?]

"We will have a 50/50 run/pass ratio." [i would settle for a 60/40 run/pass ratio - although I know last night we ran 58 plays and 29 were passes - 50/50, but what were our play ratios at halftime?]

"We will spread the ball around in multiple formations." [never seen this other than a lot of pre-snap movement that allows us to run up the middle with different alignments]

"We run more during the games because that it what the defense is giving us." [Miss State was packing the box and we still kept running]

"We don't need to practice our passing games against lesser opponents because we don't want to show future opponents our playbook." [enough said]

I look at the headlines in our local sports page today and see "..throws for 4 TD's", "...hurls 5 scores.", etc. I want us to play like we did against Rice when we won 77-0 in 1977 and never stopped throwing the ball. I want us to be a modern football team while playing with a strong defense. I want to see passes to the tight end, quick slants, audibles (when is the last time we had a QB that could even audible like Tommy Hodson?).

Yes, I am frustrated by last night. I was frustrated by all of my friends dogging Les Miles, even in 2011 when we had one of the most historic seasons in college football, except the last game, but we definitely settled on Coach O. His [our] team played without any energy and ran the same offense that we have seen for the last 5 years with most of the same coaches that Les Miles had already hired (except Canada). We are looking at LSU/Les Miles 1.0 (not 2.0 because that would denote an improvement over the prior version).

I will still drive 925 miles to watch LSU play. I will suffer through the season, but we are not a very good team. I am sad and embarrassed, until I realize it is a game played by 18-22 year olds and coached by people that are drastically overpaid. I have been through the Cholly Mac's, the Mike Archer's, the Curley Hallman's and the Gerry DiNardo's and I will survive.

This too shall pass (not literally, but figuratively), but (and this makes me unhappy to write this) this might be the first LSU coach that even I can't get behind.