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He lost track of who he wasâ: Inside Ed Orgeronâs fall from celebrated son of Louisiana to LSU coaching pariah
Brody Miller Oct 17, 2021
301 
BATON ROUGE, La. â Five years ago, Ed Orgeron sped down I-12 at 6 a.m. with his head out the window of his black GMC truck blaring âBorn on the Bayouâ from Mandeville to Baton Rouge on the way to live out his dreams. Waiting for him outside the football operations building was athletic director Joe Alleva, preparing to offer him the LSU head coaching job. The kid from Larose, La., was going to become the most important public figure in his home state.
And somehow a lifetime has been lived within these five years, an LSU coaching tenure meandering from laughingstock to legend to statewide pariah. Few believed Orgeron should be LSUâs football coach. Then they thought he should hold the role for life. Now heâs been unceremoniously labeled a one-hit wonder and will soon be looking for a job.
LSU and Orgeron reached a separation agreement that will take effect after the season, sources tell The Athletic , confirming multiple reports. Orgeron is expected to get his full buyout, according to The Athleticâs Bruce Feldman. It comes less than two years after leading an undefeated national championship team in 2019 that some argued was the best in college football history. He followed that championship with a pair of up and down campaigns with two polar-opposite staffs, neither working to lift the Tigers. All of this included characteristic drama along the way.
The rise and fall of Orgeron can be defined by what happens when an already volatile man reaches the absolute peak of his profession, popularity and prestige right as he undergoes a public divorce through a pandemic while the world shifts around him. Itâs about the difference between being able to learn from failure and being able to sustain that success.
Orgeronâs time at LSU wasnât a repeat of his Ole Miss tenure. This wasnât a downfall via chaotic behavior and driving assistants mad. It was a slow and steady whittling away of all the things that brought him and the program success. Add in a massive Title IX scandal in the university and the newly single Orgeronâs interactions with women bringing new distractions, and the changing off-field behavior coincided with declining on-field results.
âHe lost track of who he was and what made him good from the national championship to now,â one source told The Athletic.
There were coordinator hires of coaches Orgeron admits to not fully interviewing and embarrassing interactions with fans. There were viral photos of him in bed with women. There were political comments that fractured the locker room and a poorly handled racial inequality protest. And there was a roster that lacked the leadership of LSUâs 2019 title team. All of this under a new athletic director who didnât hire Orgeron and had no built-in loyalty to him.
Thereâs no one thing that brought Ed Orgeron down. If the championship was called a âperfect stormâ that came together for greatness, so too was it a perfect storm that led to his demise.
âThat doesnât make him a bad coach,â one person close to the situation said. âIt doesnât make him a bad motivator. It doesnât make him a bad recruiter. It doesnât make him a bad person. He just lost track of who Coach O is a little bit and his sense of identity.â
When football became secondary
On the night LSU won the national championship in New Orleans, Orgeron went back to his hotel room around 2:30 a.m. with his wife, Kelly. They had nothing to eat, but somebody handed them some Popeyes chicken and the two finished off the box before falling asleep. By the time he woke up five hours later for a news conference, he was the man with the most capital in all of Louisiana.
Six weeks later, Orgeron filed for divorce.
In his 23 years married to Kelly, Orgeron generally kept a low social profile. His personality will always be larger than life, but he didnât go out often and wasnât known to socialize much. After battling alcoholism and a past involving arrests and restraining orders, Orgeron lived a more stable and private life for 23 years with âMiss Kelly.â
Then, at his most powerful â and his most wealthy â Orgeron was single again. He had just signed a six-year, $42 million extension and was a Louisiana hero. And he was going to enjoy it. âSomething that had priority in his life that didnât have a priority before was talking to (women),â one LSU source said. âThat just became too high on the totem pole.â
To people and sources inside the program, there was no moral issue with Orgeron enjoying his life, but it was noticeable that football wasnât his entire focus like it had been in years past, and it became a distraction. There was the infamous 2020 photo of him in bed with a woman, among other photos made public. Multiple sources said he brought women around the LSU football operations building. It all took place as his decision-making and coaching performance declined.
âIt was just a distraction,â one LSU player said. âIn 2019, there was no, âWhatâs Coach O doing postgame or Sunday during the day? Is he laying by the pool with a lady?â He was planning events other than football.â
It created messes for him, like the time Orgeron pulled up to a woman at a gas station wearing exercise attire. âHey, you look like you work out,â he said, according to multiple sources. âWe could work out together.â The woman informed Orgeron she was married and pregnant, to which he responded, âWhy does that matter?â
(Jamie Schwaberow / Getty Images)
That woman was the wife of a high-ranking LSU official. Word of this reached the LSU Board of Supervisors, the collection of prominent Louisiana attorneys and business owners appointed by the governor who make the most important decisions at LSU. And of course, it reached LSU athletic director Scott Woodward.
A program â and school â mired in a Title IX scandal
The off-field issues about Orgeronâs personal life were happening behind the scenes. Right at the forefront of the collegiate sports world was a Title IX scandal throughout LSU, headlined by accusations that former star running back Derrius Guice raped multiple students. It led to LSU launching an internal investigation run by the Husch Blackwell law firm, and most of the transgressions took place under former coach Les Milesâ watch. Orgeron was hardly mentioned in the report.
But then 74-year-old part-time Mercedes-Benz Superdome worker Gloria Scott came forward with allegations that Guice sexually harassed her at a high school football game. She said she spoke to Orgeron about the interaction and he did nothing. Orgeron denied speaking to Scott and said he was informed of the action by athletic department officials, and LSU then opened its own investigation. The situation got messier when a recording surfaced of a man said to be representing Scott asked LSU officials for money in exchange for Scott not going public. Scott said this man was not given permission to do this, and she also said Orgeron lied about not speaking to her.
Later, a lawsuit was filed against LSU by multiple victims accusing the university of not properly investigating sexual misconduct allegations. The lawsuit added Orgeron and his LLC as defendants as it accused Orgeron of being told, by a player, of an alleged Guice rape. The victim was the playerâs then-girlfriend, and the lawsuit accuses Orgeron of knowing and not reporting it. Orgeron denied having any knowledge of the alleged rape, and the Husch Blackwell report found his denial credible. Those close to Orgeron found it noticeable that LSU administrators did little to point out these corrections publicly or to defend him. It was a signifier that support was fading.
Yet none of those issues, at the time, were enough for LSU to pursue firing Orgeron. Multiple sources said these were all concerns and issues LSU monitored, but they all essentially went away with time.
Until LSU continued to lose.
And then came the losses
Orgeron is a loyal man who willingly serves at the request of his mentors. He reveres Jimmy Johnson and would run through a wall for Pete Carroll, and that extends to former bosses such as Paul Pasqualoni and Lane Kiffin. Thatâs how the man raised in the Cajun way views the world.
Itâs why he was so angry and surprised when passing game coordinator Joe Brady turned down a $1.5 million raise from LSU to leave for the Carolina Panthers in January 2020. Orgeron felt like he plucked Brady out of a nothing job with the New Orleans Saints and helped make him a star, so he perceived that departure after one season as a lack of respect.
Following LSUâs national title season, when Orgeron had to replace Brady as well as defensive coordinator Dave Aranda (who left to become the head coach at Baylor), he turned to his mentors. To replace the cerebral Aranda, he called Carroll for advice. Carroll raved about Bo Pelini, calling him one of the best defensive minds he knows. Pelini was once the hottest defensive name in the game, LSUâs coordinator for its 2007 national championship under Miles and a successful head coach at Nebraska for seven years. So Orgeron hired Pelini for $2.3 million, despite admitting later he didnât properly interview or vet him.
Pelini had spent the previous five years coaching FCS Youngstown State, where only once had he won more than six games. He hadnât coached Power 5 football since 2014, and he hadnât been in the SEC since 2007. And now Orgeron was instructing him to install an attacking 4-3 defense for the defending champs.
It failed. Miserably. LSU had its worst defensive season in program history, allowing 96 points in its first three games and opening the season allowing a record-shattering 623 yards to Mississippi State. A defense with multiple All-Americans and major talents looked lost and timid. There were constant breakdowns in coverage that led to receivers running free game after game. It ranked last in the SEC in explosive plays.
LSU finished 5-5, its worst season in 21 years, and suddenly all of that capital Orgeron once possessed had vanished. Orgeron had the cachet to hire anyone he wanted in January 2020. What he did with it was hire Pelini without due diligence.
On offense, he hired as pass game coordinator Scott Linehan, a long-respected NFL offensive coordinator technically overqualified for the role but understood to be well behind on modern schemes. Orgeron had a staff primarily composed of older White men who were past their primes, not as skilled at recruiting and not well-suited for relating to a young, primarily Black roster. It was a group comprised of old buddies and favors made.
While the coaching hires were putting LSU behind already, there were also internal cultural issues. A few weeks before the 2020 season, Orgeron went on Fox News and â after being pressed multiple times â said âI love President Trump.â Sources said that upset a large portion of the locker room, with Black players hearing their coach saying he loves a president whom they perceived as touting racist policies and beliefs.
That sparked tension within LSU. Two weeks later, when teams across the country were skipping practices to hold peaceful protests of racial inequality after the death of George Floyd, Orgeron did not join his team. When the players asked Orgeron to take part, he sent assistant coaches to meet them and temper the situation. When Orgeron eventually met with his players in the LSU presidentâs office, sources said players were not happy with Orgeronâs contributions.
Former LSU star and current ESPN analyst Ryan Clark was involved through this process and spoke to the team in the weeks that followed. He pointed out to The Athletic that White players like quarterback Myles Brennan spoke and were honest that they didnât understand all of the issues, but that they loved their teammates and wanted to support them. Clark said thatâs all Orgeron had to do.
âIt either meant you had no pulse on the situation,â Clark said, âor it meant that even with having a pulse on the situation, understanding what Black Americans and Black young men were going through at the time, you didnât even care to fake it. That was an issue for me.â
One source described those weeks, saying: âIt just kind of changed the attitude of our team. The best way to put it: It exposed our building.â It wasnât irreparable damage. The normally apolitical Orgeron later marched with the team and said publicly he canât continue to be oblivious. âIf itâs affecting our players, I need to be educated on whatâs going on, why itâs going on, listen to them, open up some dialogue and find some solutions,â he said.
(Chuck Cook / USA TODAY Sports)
Itâs impossible to know how much these tensions lingered, but Orgeron was able to convince the majority of NFL draft-eligible players to return for the 2021 season. Then, in part due to a mandate from Woodward, Orgeron reshuffled his staff with a focus on getting drastically younger and more diverse. Relations seemed jovial all spring and summer. LSU was going to have an uber-experienced team with modern schemes and sharp young coaches.
The stage for a bounce-back season was set.
The comeback that wasnât, and the end of Orgeron at LSU
The decline was swift and messy. While the 2020 season could be explained away with injuries, opt-outs and an unprecedented global pandemic, the 5-5 campaign put internal pressure on Orgeron to win â and fast. Still, it seemed LSU had the sort of roster and schedule to win nine or 10 games.
Instead, years of roster management issues and poor hires compiled for a situation in which the problems couldnât be washed away with âtalent.â
LSU opened the season getting embarrassed, 38-27, at UCLA. Even if the loss was excusable, frustration multiplied when, before the game, Orgeron was filmed shouting at a UCLA fan, âBring ya ass on in your little sissy blue shirt.â UCLA made it into a meme and printed âsissy blue shirtâ T-shirts.
Radio show hosts like Jordy Culotta â somebody who once had Orgeron on his Baton Rouge morning show each week â began torching Orgeron, telling stories of Orgeron confronting LSU boosters at a fishing camp and throwing chairs in a tirade over a pregame hype video. More unbecoming off-field stories came out with each poor on-field performance, and support for Orgeron waned.
LSU gave away a 13-0 lead against Auburn due to a shocking inability to run the ball. Then it got blown out, 42-21, at Kentucky. And the injuries kept piling up â from Derek Stingley to Andre Anthony, Kayshon Boutte to Ali Gaye and so on â and faith kept dwindling. LSU kept finding new ways to lose.
Orgeronâs two young coordinator hires â Jake Peetz and Daronte Jones â may go on to good careers, but they also were first-time high-level coordinators perhaps not quite ready to call the shots for an SEC power in a must-win season. LSUâs roster, comprised largely of three consecutive top-five signing classes, had character issues and a lack of leadership. The offensive line became disastrous. Only six of the 10 highest-ranked players in his 2019 class are still with the team, due to issues ranging from academics to arrests to not being good enough. His biggest recruiting coup â five-star tight end Arik Gilbert â left the program midseason in 2020 due to personal issues.
A team that once had star leaders like Devin White, Joe Burrow, Grant Delpit, Damien Lewis, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Lloyd Cushenberry and Patrick Queen â who would call out people for slacking at practice or not putting in the extra work â now lacks those stars to hold anyone accountable. As one source put it, âThereâs nobody there to stop the bleeding.â
Another said: âWhen your best players are the youngest guys on the team, itâs always interesting.â
There have been issues with how LSU practices and develops. When Orgeron first took over in 2016, he received acclaim for changing LSUâs practice strategies and operating with the âwork smarter, not harderâ philosophy. While itâs unclear if there was a conscious change, staffers have noticed Orgeron tense at practices and it leading to adjustments.
âWe overdo things and the team is worn down,â one LSU coach said. âSome of the âreally good recruitsâ have deficiencies that arenât strengthened. Talents arenât maximized. His whole idea of âbuilding a tough teamâ since I got here has been a lot of uncommon practice techniques and thought processes. Itâs just behind the times.â
And now a program that on paper is one of the five most talented in college football is falling toward the bottom of the SEC. A coach that took LSU to a national championship is unemployed two years later.
(Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)
Orgeron will now forever be linked to former Auburn coach Gene Chizik, a man also fired two years after winning a national championship in 2010. But many around Orgeron strongly consider that unfair. Chizikâs title felt like one superstar player, Cam Newton, lifting an average team to great heights. Chizik didnât have another season over .500 in SEC play.
Orgeron is the coach who lifted LSU from its struggles and the man who led it off a cliff. He fixed many of the lingering issues from the Miles era â an outdated offense, a troubled culture â and recruited a deep and loaded team that produced 14 players selected in the 2020 NFL Draft. He got Burrow from Ohio State and found Brady out of nowhere with the Saints. He earned that national title.
And he earned this decline. He was dealt unfair hands like the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented injuries and star players opting out. But he also made the choices and actions that had LSUâs standard of performance drop a little each day.
âIn 2019, everything went right,â a player under Orgeron said. âYou had the right coaches, the right players, the right schemes, the right everything. Everything since then has been the wrong this, the wrong that, the wrong player, the wrong position, the wrong call. Itâs literally the polar opposite of 2019.â
In the end, Woodward made his decision. The athletic director who grew up in Baton Rouge was always waiting for a chance to make his mark. But Woodward is patient and strategic. And eventually Orgeron built the case for Woodward.
One source who was quite critical of Orgeron admitted: âI really think Coach O could still get it together. He needs the reality check heâs getting now, but itâs too little, too late. Itâs not like heâs not a guy who canât do it again, but it went downhill so fast and he wasnât able to recognize what was happening.â
Orgeron is the undisciplined hothead who fell apart at Ole Miss and the careful leader who constructed LSUâs 2019 juggernaut. Heâs the paranoid plotter with rude nicknames and a man who carelessly makes mistakes without knowing it. And days after Hurricane Ida devastated South Louisiana, in particular his hometown of Larose, Orgeron was filmed (unbeknownst to him) on a Houston elevator getting asked about the damage. He told them Larose was âpounded.â
Then Orgeronâs eyes faded around the top of the elevator. He looked sad, the hurricane taking an emotional toll on the man from the bayou with the distinct voice.
âThatâs what makes us who we are,â he said. âWe fight. No matter what we do, we fight.â
Orgeron lived every possible version of his identity as head coach at LSU. He was the man who won the fight to bring LSU back to the highest of heights, and the man who lost the fight to keep the Tigers there.
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