Well, we all got our hearts broken yesterday. Atlanta was looking nice and playing for the BCS Title looked even nicer. However, that is not going to happen unfortunately. I've been saying for three years now I would save my judgement of Miles until after this year. I said this season was his exam. Well, it is time to grade the exam.
First the positives on Miles. I think he is a good man. He has good character. Family man type of guy and everyone who has met him likes him. The players like him. These are not bad things in a coach.
If he stays at LSU, he will win 75% of his games. He is a good recruiter, knows how to recognize talent. He hires good staff (although I am now questioning Pelini as a good SEC DC), which says he is not afraid to hire true experts for his team, something coaches like Dinardo were averse to doing. Just hiring good coaches and having strong recruiting classes will ensure a winning record at LSU, a string of bowl games, publicity, and a decent ranking every year.
Now for the negatives. I think although he has a good character, I think it is weak to some degree and lacks strong decision-making skills. I remember last year when asked about recruiting players who had problems with academics, he replied "If you have a world class cello player, do you keep him out of college because he has problems with math? Of course not" and made it clear he had NO problem recruiting such players. I will never forget his 5-10 minute discussion defending such a policy as it was an aggressive defense. The alarm bells went off in my head as I thought "uh-oh, this means trouble."
I don't think its any coincidence that he had to kick 5 players off the team this year for violent crimes. He had similar problems at OSU. Now it is true Miles did the right thing in kicking off these players. However, if you are recruiting players who are not that smart and think they still deserve a chance at college, it means you are recruiting guys who are also going to do, well, dumb things such as attacking other players, committing burglary, putting guys in the hospital, and other things that go past teen age stupidity.
None of these pricks cared enough about the team or themselves to think about how their actions would have on their lives or LSU. One of these thugs attacked Barksdale in a bar before the season and got in more trouble. Barksdale had the sense not to make it worse. Think we needed him this year on the offensive line? Of course we did. Look at Perriloux. Nothing but a head case and has not shown anything special. The odds are he will get in trouble again and soon. When Miles came here he aggressively recruited him. I remember Saban telling us he did not like his attitude.
Forget Saban's ethics and focus on this: if the player is one Saban does not want or can't work out for Saban, history shows he is not worth having: Barrington Edwards, Robert Lane, Parquet..the list goes on. However, Miles has shown he will take a chance on such players and look what we get: reporters checking the police blotter on a daily basis with a stack of ten dollar bills ready to pay for police reports. Nice legacy. So by repeatedly recruiting players who get in trouble so much, does Miles make good decisions in choosing who to recruit? Does he focus just on talent? What is his philosophy when it comes to recruiting? It is talent alone or does it include character and intelligence?
There is no question Miles knows football but there has been another disturbing trend among his football team that can not be ignored. Under Miles, LSU tends to play to the level of the competition if its an SEC team, unless that team is really bad. His best SEC win was this year against South Carolina: 11 points.
Every mediocre or better SEC team has presented us with the same scenario: we come out flat or have to win in the last minutes of the game. We DON'T come out and control from start to finish. Yes, Saban had 3 loss seasons but he also had games where we dominated (when is the last time you heard Miles talk about domination? You know why you don't know? Because he never has.) The record does not lie:
Florida: Every game but '06 was down to the wire
Tennesse: last minute win, OT loss
Arkansas: all three close games
Auburn: everyone knows that history
SC: won by 11
UGA: Blowout loss
Alabama: OT win, last minute win, came out flat in '06
Ole Miss: against bad Ole Miss teams: OT win, back and forth game last week.
Kentucky: average SEC team this year. we lose.
MSU: we've always owned them. same with Vandy
In 03, we blew out Auburn, Georgia, S. Carolina, Bama, and Arkansas. We blew out FLorida in 02. We beat Arkansas handily in 04. Every good SEC coach will have wins against decent SEC teams where they have controlled the game from start to finish. We have had good teams blown out by Auburn, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and so on. Good SEC teams DON'T have Miles track record of playing exactly to the other team's level every game. From time to time, they dominate.
Unde Miles, LSU has not done so. The result is we live by the edge and every game is a nail-biter. That is fine for winning record. However, it shows something is not right. I don't think he focuses as other coaches do on dominating the other players. I think his nice guy personnae plays into that and he does NOT have a killer instinct. One time I heard him defend the team having a tough game in saying hey, the other team was good. You can interpret that any way you choose. That lack of a killer instinct means we will usually lose that one game that keeps us from true success in college football. In '05 before the Georgia loss, he flew to Dallas to discuss the Cotton Bowl with its represnetatives on Thursday night BEFORE the SEC Championship game. He defended it saying that was his normal family night so it did not interfere with his game preperations for Georgia. Oh really? I remember in 01 making fun of Fulmer because on that same night, he and one of his players flew to Florida and back to accept an award on that Thursday night when he should have been back in Knoxville getting his team ready for LSU. Can you imagine Saban or Meyer going out of town for a whole night 48 hours before the SEC Championship game? Can you imagine them doing family night before a big game. Make no mistake, I want coaches to spend time with their families. However, 48 hours before such a game, shouldn't they be working on the game, not worrying about bowl games or awards? However, I digress.
The lack of discipline shows up on the field during games. Leading the SEC in penalties. Repeatedly committing personal fouls on the field. Punches to the heads during games. Late hits. Repeatedly lining up wrong by experienced players, costing us touchdowns. The constant inability of our offense to use the clock wisely. The refusal to adjust during games as needed. The numerous times where the team has lacked a killer instinct when the opponent could be put away for the rest of the game (see Arkansas and Alabama this year). As for the defense, even if the soft defense is due to Pelini, Miles still can overrule him, which apparently has not happened. After three years with veteran, highly recruited players, this should not happen and the blame should be placed squarely at the feet of Miles.
One must also wonder once again about his ability to make decisions when he allows coaches like Pelini to run schemes that obviously do not work and have not worked for some time? Is it weakness? Is it a stubborness to admit when wrong or getting so focused on getting the player to execute properly that he stops seeing the bigger picture? These are questions that must be asked.
I'm sorry for writing this as I like Miles as a person. However, we have to decide what are our expectations. If it is to be a winning program with bowl games every year, then Miles is your coach. However, there is a huge difference between a championship coach and a winning coach. Saban was a championship coach. Stallings was a championship coach. Meyer is one as well. We won't even mention Tuberville. Put those guys into big games that mean something, they knew what to do. Miles has shown that in games that truly count, he does not know how to coach the team before or during the game.
I am not one of these idiot fans who think we should go undefeated every year and think ten wins a year is not good enough. I'm happy with ten wins a year. However, I want a championship coach. My expectation is a top ten or so ranking every year and every 5 years or so, a shot at the national title. A shot, not a win. Its very rare you get to the level of Miami in the 80's or Florida State in the 80's or 90's where you are playing for one every year and I don't have those expectations.
However, I don't think Miles is a championship coach. He will win, he will have success and if that is your expectation, then is the coach for you. If you want a championship coach, then he is not your coach and we should let him go to Michigan. Unlike Skip, I don't want a "best fit". I want a championship coach who has his team disciplined on AND off the field.
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