Those clock-management issues were downright humiliating, particularly when ESPN GameDay aired a satirical segment on LSU football coach Les Miles and included first-graders learning how to tell time.
Entire websites, blogs and Facebook pages are devoted to skewering Miles and mocking his cryptic comments. There’s The Quotable Les Miles, Stupid Sh*t Les Says, and the less-subtle Les Miles Is An Idiot, Replace Les Miles and Fire Les Miles.
For better and for worse, he’s been christened the Mad Hatter, and digitally parodied as the rapper Flavor Flav—fully accessorized with a Viking helmet and a giant wall clock on a chain. There’s also an altered photograph of him in the LSU film room, watching multiple screens of cartoons instead of game footage. He ate grass on national television, for goodness’ sake.
But he’s also led the Tigers to two BCS berths and the 2007 BCS championship. He has the highest winning percentage in the post-Charles McClendon era and one of the highest winning percentages in school history. His players love him and love playing for him.
And he’s beaten Nick Saban [twice]. And Urban Meyer [three times]. And Steve Spurrier [twice].
Ah, the enigma of Les Miles. Rarely in the history of college football—or any sport, for that matter—has a winner been treated like such a loser.
“There’s probably not another coach who has won a national championship who has gotten so much criticism in such a short period of time,” says Bryan Lazare, senior writer for TigerBait.com. “At the end of last year, a very large segment of the fan base was very critical of him. There are coaches who over time, if they fail to win consistently, lose support, like Phillip Fulmer at Tennessee. But he won the [national] championship in 1998, and then his winning dropped off some. It wasn’t until six or seven years later that the criticism started coming.
“Les’ situation is very unique in that he is three years removed from a national championship, and he’s getting this kind of criticism.”
So what is it? Why aren’t fans feeling more love for Les?
Is it the awkward public persona, coupled with the oodles of fractured syntax that spill forth from his mouth? The ridiculous clock-management incidents against Auburn in 2007, Ole Miss last season and Tennessee earlier this season that have football fans everywhere mocking Miles and the Tigers?
Sure, fans love those trick plays when they work, but are they really comfortable with a coach who’s unconventional and downright unpredictable? Or haven’t they really gotten over the one true love who betrayed them? Take a deep breath and say it together: Nick Saban.
And then there’s the increasingly unrealistic expectations of college sports fans. If their team doesn’t win a championship every year, then they haven’t won at all. The coaches, after all, are making multimillion-dollar salaries, and the Tiger Athletic Foundation’s Tradition Fund now sets fans back as much as $950 per season ticket-.
Miles has had an uphill relationship with fans almost since he arrived on the scene. LSU fans might despise Saban as a traitor, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t remained the standard by which all other LSU football coaches must be compared. The 2007 national championship, for example, was widely credited to Saban’s recruiting rather than to Miles’ coaching. And it’s pretty much gone downhill from there, although the Tigers’ 24-21 come-from-behind victory over the Crimson Tide earlier this month in Tiger Stadium certainly helped.
“The guy is replacing Nick Saban, who without a doubt is one of the best coaches in college football history,” Lazare says. “And now [Saban’s] the coach of one of our biggest rivals. If Nick Saban weren’t coaching at Alabama, I don’t think the criticism of Les Miles would be as intense as it is.”
Regardless of their feelings for him as a coach, most people who know Miles agree on one point: He’s a nice, humble guy, who is generous with fans and genuinely seems to care about his players. Compared to the troubles occurring at other Southeastern Conference schools—Auburn, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee—LSU has experienced very few arrests or off-the-field controversies under his leadership, says Glenn Guilbeau, who covers LSU sports for Louisiana Gannett News.
“One thing most people don’t realize is that he has a tremendous relationship with his players,” LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva says. “They love to play for him, and he gets them to play for him. He’s a great recruiter, and when you are able to get great players and motivate them, those factors outweigh some other things.”
Yes, those “other things.”
Lazare explains it this way: The most important skills for any person in the public eye—coaches included—are communication and organization. Nick Saban is considered gifted in both; Miles isn’t.
Remember these Miles-isms? “They are going to hand someone a trophy with champion on it after the game, and we want it.” “Like, for instance, he was 226. He’s now like 206. He’s lost at least 10 pounds.” “We want to play a great game, and they certainly give us competition enough to do so.” Who says stuff like that?
“One reason he’s unpopular with fans is because he is not a consistently good speaker,” Guilbeau says. “He answers questions—or doesn’t answer them—in a very aggravating fashion. Sometimes, when Miles discusses his team, he seems so detached from it that it’s like you’re listening to someone not directly involved with the team.”
Then there were the clock-management meltdowns: the touchdown pass from Matt Flynn to Demetrius Byrd on the final play against Auburn in 2007, when LSU needed only a field goal to win; the failure to spike the ball at the 5-yard line as time ran out last year at Ole Miss; and the second-chance touchdown earlier this season against Tennessee after the Volunteers were penalized for having 13 players on the field on the final play of regulation.
Suddenly, the “Mad Hatter” moniker—given to him by ESPN’s Rece Davis—shifted from admiration for a gambler whose extraordinary risks paid off to derision for a coach who seemingly had no grasp of the game.
“In ’07, it was great. Les was seen as this daring, gambling coach who took LSU to the national title with fourth-down conversions, fake field goals and the best offense in LSU history,” Guilbeau says. “Since 2008, though, people have been tuning in for the wrecks as if LSU is in NASCAR. There were interceptions for touchdowns in 2008. And since late 2009, LSU is must-see-TV for clock-management crashes as well as more fakes and great wins.”
Stewart Mandel, a senior writer for SI.com and contributor to Sports Illustrated, thinks Miles’ unconventionality, while admirable, might not sit well with some fans—who are torn by their desire for the Tigers to win and their desire for Miles to quit, be fired or leave for another school.
“He doesn’t fit the mold of most college football coaches, both in terms of personality and strategies,” he says. “He’s not your typical conservative coach. He takes a lot of chances, and that obviously makes fans nervous sometimes.
“But he’s won a national championship, and this year, the team seems to be doing well. It’s hard to argue with a record. By any quantitative measure, he’s an extremely successful coach.”
For now, thrilling victories over Alabama and Ole Miss, a blowout of Louisiana-Monroe and talk of a BCS berth have taken much of the heat off of Miles, complaints on YouTube about him making Louisianans “look like a bunch of grass-eating freaks” aside.
But let the Tigers lose to Arkansas in the regular-season finale or in a postseason bowl game, and fans could soon forget.
What’s not known—Miles wasn’t available for an interview—is whether he still loves coaching at LSU. Might he be enticed by an offer at, say, Colorado or Michigan?
“The win [over Alabama] meant Miles can be as good as the coach who won it all in 2007,” Guilbeau says, “but fans are a little hesitant to love him unconditionally again.”
Which brings us to another possibility: Are the expectations of LSU fans too high? After all, only one team can win the conference championship.
Consider how Florida fans booed their coaches as soon as the Tigers went ahead in that game, even though Meyer has led the Gators to two national championships, two SEC championships, three Eastern Division titles and five consecutive January bowl games, including three BCS games.
“Expectations are probably unrealistic in most cases,” Mandel says. “Florida fans expect to be SEC champions every year, and Texas fans have high expectations of their team, too. If teams are down, fans are freaking out. Back in the day, the goal was a bowl game, but at a school like LSU, you’re only successful if you make the BCS. There are only 10 BCS berths, so a lot of fans are going to be disappointed every year.”
Alleva admits some LSU fans are indeed passionate about the game, and some have a “what-have-you-done-for-me-lately?” attitude. But he says it’s to be expected, given what they pay for tickets and the sacrifices they make to follow the team.
But Guilbeau doesn’t think expectations are too high.
Miles earns $3.8 million annually and has a $15 million buyout, and “coaches who make that much money should have more presence of mind at crunch time,” he says. “Coaches who make that much money should know how to call a timeout, know that you call two plays late in a game and know how to keep an eye on the clock late in the game.”
One measure of Miles’ impact is recruiting. LSU doesn’t appear to be having as much success with attracting out-of-state players as it has in the past, Lazare says, even though ESPN.com currently ranks the Tigers’ 2011 class as No. 7 nationally and No. 3 in the SEC.
National Signing Day isn’t until February, however, and if the Tigers finish strong and win their bowl game, their accomplishments on the field might outshine any ridicule Miles has received from the national media.
“Some schools are synonymous with their coaches, like Joe Paterno and Penn State,” Mandel says. “LSU and Les Miles go hand in hand at this point. You can’t think of an LSU football game without thinking of ‘The Hat.’”
