BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) LSU named its new head football coach at a press conference at noon on Saturday, November 26.
Coach Ed Orgeron, a Louisiana native, will be the 33rd head coach of the LSU Tigers football coach.
Orgeron apparently has beaten the odds. Thought to be a severe long shot when he first took over as the interim head coach, Orgeron is expected to be named LSU’s permanent head football coach at noon press conference on Saturday, November 26.
LSU Vice Chancellor and Athletic Director Joe Alleva said the coaching search would never come down to a bidding war. Alleva stated Orgeron was the only candidate to receive an offical offer from LSU for head coach. “We had our man all along. This is his dream job,” said Alleva.
An emotional Orgeron took to the podium and thank the board of supervisors, his family, choking up thanking his mother and father, and most of all the LSU football players. Orgeron said the LSU head coaching job is the best in the country and it has always been his dream job.
When asked about what the coaching staff would look like, especially the position of offensive coordinator, Orgeron said, “We’re going to look at recruiting the best offensive coordinator in college football.”
After a 2-2 LSU start that got veteran head coach Les Miles fired, Orgeron led the Tigers to a 5-2 finish, most recently with a 54-39 win at the Texas A&M Aggies Thanksgiving night.
The fiery Cajun endeared himself to many Louisiana natives this season, although a 16-10 home loss to the Florida Gators was viewed as perhaps a catastrophic blow to Orgeron’s chances of keeping the gig full-time.
As LSU entered the final week of the regular season, Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher and Houston’s Tom Herman seemed to be the top two targets for the LSU position, with Orgeron strongly lingering.
Negotiations with Fisher apparently were extremely frustrating and never got very far, while Herman still wanted to give the Texas Longhorns a strong look entering the weekend.
LSU athletic director Joe Alleva and the powers that be then decided they wouldn’t wait on Herman, who many thought would choose the Longhorns anyway and instead immediately offered the position to Orgeron.
The 55-year old Orgeron has only been a college head coach once and it didn’t go well. Orgeron was 10-25 overall, 3-21 in the SEC with the Ole Miss Rebels from 2005-2007.
However he was 6-2 as an interim head coach with the USC Trojans in 2013 and has vowed he is a much different coach today, than the man who roamed the sidelines in Oxford.
