dustinamodeo

Hmm....I'll try to be succinct with this in order to not completely derail the thread as I do not see a way to PM on this site (is there one?). I'm awful at conveying tone through typing, so I'll try to clear a few things up briefly as I feel a new member to any forum owes respect to those that have been around long before him.

There was no attempt to put you in your place. I'm not sure what assumptions you feel I've made aside from the yelling. That was based on my understanding of the connotation of the word "pontificate." I've always thought of it as a close synonym to "preaching," which to me is a man standing at a pulpit essentially yelling to the parishioners his "version of the facts."

As far as why I feel the need to constantly slam him, I don't really feel that I have. I actually felt that I more or less agreed with most of your points. If he hadn't shown such blind loyalty to JJ for so long now then this one mishap wouldn't have been such an issue. But it hasn't been like that at all, and it finally caught up to him on the biggest possible stage and hurt all of us in huge ways. It was insulting to me to pour as much money into my 3 days in New Orleans and to have that "team" show up. The fact is that I have never been that truly upset by it. I'm just baffled, and I don't want to ever have to worry about anything close to that sort of scenario happening again. That's why Les needs to realize just how displeased the fans are, imho. If he truly didn't see what the rest of the world saw in JJ, then he needs to allow someone else to have more of a say when coming up with the game plans. If he did see it, but felt a strong sense of loyalty to JJ, then he needs to realize the point that you made regarding the organization being more important than an individual. Either way, I feel the LSU faithful need to stay somewhat on the attack long enough that the media continues to cover it in order to let it truly resonate with CLM. By summertime, it needs to stop, and we all need to get back on board with everything our coaches and players do.

As far as my hostility or rudeness goes (that you didn't directly mention, but the implication was justly there), I was only attempting to be as hostile as I found things like, "I don't really care what most of you think because you're behaving like whiners and generally low-rent people. Get over yourselves," to be. If they weren't intended to be nearly as rude as I took them, then I can see how I came off as going on the offensive.

And ya damn right we're friends. I'd jump into a bar fight if 10 of the biggest, dumbest gumps in the whole state of Alabama started wailing on you or any of my LSU brethren even though we'd both get the hell beat out of us.

:geauxtigers:

@RealityTiger: Well stated.

@JawjaTigah: Thank you. :)

I feel now is as good a time as any to make my first post onto this fine site. Typical long term lurker, first time poster. And I'm going to make my first a TL;DR.

Tenacious, you made a post voicing a very strong opinion with (what I hope) was the intent of creating a deep, meaningful discussion on one of the more abstract and imprecise ideas that the human race has ever conceived: Leadership. As the concept of leadership is such a fluid idea, statements such as the one you made in your follow up post ("It's alright. Go ahead. Let me have it if it makes you feel better. I'm still right.") caused me to have an internal debate as to whether or not I should even dignify your initial post with a response. I finally determined that entering the topic would be a good thing for others (hopefully), as well as myself (certainly). Bouncing ideas off of each other is the best way to begin to obtain a better understanding of the world's most complex ideas.Socrates, perhaps one of the greatest leaders and educators of men to have ever lived, believed that the best way to teach was not to tell his pupils his beliefs, but instead, to lead them to form their own. While there are certainly people on this board who agree with every single one of your points (although I feel that number is remarkably low), do you think that your post educated or persuaded those who didn’t? If it did, then that’s great. But if it didn’t, which I personally believe to be the case, then its purpose was simply to help you sustain your ego. There are certainly other ways besides the Socratic Method to teach, but this was not one of them. Before you deem yourself worthy of educating others with the written word again, I implore you to learn one of them.

While I disagree with the way in which you chose to go about this, you most certainly were able to back into a couple of valid points. I feel that we all realize that Les Miles certainly cares more about whether his team wins or loses than anyone on this planet. The fact that he twice has chosen to stay in Baton Rouge when his alma mater attempted to court him to be their head coach tells you everything you need to know about his dedication to LSU, Baton Rouge, and his players. Your second point is also irrefutable. Leaders DO have to make the toughest decisions. Every time there is a decision to be made that reaches Les Miles it has already been deemed too big of a decision for someone in a lower position to make. All the easy decisions are made before even reaching Les Miles. Stating that “The organization is more important than the individual” I found to be the most curious point in your list. Not because I disagreed with it, but because of how poorly it was executed by Coach Les Miles. I don’t know why it is that Les Miles has such a sense of loyalty towards Jordan Jefferson, but Les’s commitment to this one young man caused his team to suffer. To what degree did this loyalty actually hurt his team? Who knows? Jarrett Lee may have gotten under center and proven to be even more inept than Jordan Jefferson. Even if there was a 99.9% certainty that Lee would have done just as poorly, Les hurt his team by not putting Lee on the field. Everyone else in the country knew that Jordan was not going to get the job done. No one will ever know if Jarrett would have. It is a coach’s job to not hurt his team, and that is exactly what Les Miles did on Monday. When you moved on to your fourth point you completely went off the deep end. You somehow managed to connect a leader trusting his staff to having that very staff share the burden of responsibility 100% of the time. In addition to the fact that I see no clear way that these statements can even be linked, it is riddled with other logical gaps. Initially, it completely conflicts with your second point. At a deeper level it begs the question, are all groups that have leaders run in the same fashion? In my experience, they certainly are not. When a group of five friends hang out together, whoever exhibits the greatest ability to lead men is generally thrust into a de facto leadership position. However, he in no way controls what the other individuals actually do. Therefore, the leader of this group would have virtually no responsibility for the actions of the other members. On the other end of the spectrum, history shows us many nations that were controlled by an absolutist dictator or tyrant. These leaders often times had advisers that were at least permitted to give an opinion when it was asked of them. However, all of the blame (or praises) lay with the tyrant and the tyrant alone. The latter example is a much more apt comparison to the way a college football team functions. Les Miles certainly trusts his staff’s input, but on each and every decision of consequence, it is Les Miles who is to be held accountable. Les Miles, who I feel to be a good leader, knows this, and seems to finally be taking responsibility for mistakes that were made on the football field on his watch. Your fifth point only needs a minor adjustment for me to agree with it fully: “[Poor] Leaders learn more from failure than from success.” I’m far from a Nick Saban puppet, but the day after Bama beat Texas for the National Championship, Nick Saban was in his office with his staff going over what mistakes they made in that game and how to fix them. Leaders sitting atop something as competitive as a FBS football team must be able to learn just as much from victory as they do defeat. If you’re not going forward, you’re going backward.

While the five points that you brought up took up the most space in your post, they were far from the boldest and most terrifying part of your post. In order to conclude your post, you included the following: “I was yelling at the TV just as much as you. But it doesn't help you, Coach Miles, or the program for you to continue to throw this guy under the bus. All it does is divide the Tiger community and hurt the team and the coaches.”

The fact that you say you were just as outraged on Monday as the people that you later go on to call “whiners and generally low-rent people,” and have so quickly changed your tune is terrifying to me. This is not something that can be swept under the rug. Whether the game plan wasn’t right, wasn’t executed correctly, the wrong quarterback started, the right quarterback didn’t get put in, or the turf at the superdome didn’t taste good, I do not know. But what I do know is that something went horribly, horribly awry on Monday night. I am in no way calling for Les Miles to be fired, or even formally reprimanded for the way he coached on Monday night. That thought is absolutely absurd. However, he MUST learn from this. He must realize that something has to change. We had a phenomenal season, but I ask, did Les do anything all year that helped his team get more points on the board in a single game that any semi-competent collegiate football coach wouldn't have done? He certainly didn’t do anything to help his team get a first down through 30 minutes of play in the SEC Championship Game. Nor anything to help his team even get on the scoreboard in the BCS National Championship Game. I would never be as bold as to state exactly what it is he needs to do to get his team firing on cylinders all of the time. Whether he needs to take on fewer responsibilities in preparing game plans, relinquish some of the duties on the field during the games, or something entirely different, I truly do not know. I do, however, know that something needs to be done. And if we, as a fan base, allow this to be forgotten, I promise you that change will not come.

-Dustin Amodeo