Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
By Hunt Palmer
Three months before Lane Kiffin leads the Tigers out of the Tiger Stadium tunnel for the first time, all was quiet in an empty Death Valley on Saturday.
That tunnel was full of highly touted high school prospects, the kind Kiffin came to Baton Rouge to coach.
A familiar voice led them, painting the picture of what it’s like to take the field in Baton Rouge in front of 102,000 fans. It was a voice from another former Ole Miss head coach. He slapped the win bar and threw the doors open beneath the north end zone bleachers, instructing the recruits to run through the goalposts onto the field as tradition dictates.
It was Ed Orgeron.
Even in the wake of his firing, Orgeron insisted how much he loved LSU. The man born and raised along Bayou Lafourche always wanted the head coaching job in purple and gold. He got it for six years. And it was taken away amid a program tailspin that included blowout losses to Mississippi State, UCLA and Kentucky.
Often times when a dream job is taken a way, deep resentment is harbored. There’s good reason to expect that resentment is still held for former Athletic Director Scott Woodward who made the decision to fire Orgeron. It didn’t extend to the school.
Orgeron was hired two weeks ago as Special Assistant to Recruiting and Defense. On its face, the move looked like a figurehead position that came with a modest, by college coaching standards, $100,000 salary. His sudden visibility on the promotional front last fall suggested Orgeron was ready to get back in to coaching. The right job obviously never came up. Five months after the cycle reached its conclusion, Orgeron is back at work in Baton Rouge.
And he’s leading portions of the biggest recruiting weekend of the year.
So much goes into these weekends. From the moment the players and their families land in Baton Rouge, it’s a full court press. A check in at football operations, hotel welcoming gifts, meeting time with position coaches and coordinators, academic discussions, time with Lane Kiffin and general Manager Billy Glasscock to talk about financial numbers, photo shoots, lavish meals, time with current players, nights out.
Kiffin has assembled a massive staff to make the machine run smoothly. Orgeron is an added piece.
In the same way it’s hard to imagine Orgeron dicing up the Georgia defense like Kiffin’s offense the last three times out, it’s hard to see Kiffin selling a quiet stadium like it’s a classic Saturday Night in Death Valley. Orgeron didn’t need a refresher course. He’s lived it.
“Best sound in football, LSU Tigers going to war!” he exclaimed as he instructed the recruits to mimic buckling their chin straps in unison.
As unlikely a reunion as it is, this one seems to make sense now.
Kiffin appears to be a strong delegator. He sticks to his…lane…and does what he does as well as anyone in college football, score points. Pete Golding ran the defense in Oxford. Blake Baker does that in Baton Rouge. Now, Kiffin’s got a recruiting head coach to handle the “rah rah” parts of visit weekends. Orgeron was videoed coaching one-on-one defensive line fundamentals with No. 1 overall prospect Jalen Brewster this weekend. That sound like something Kiffin is going to do? Didn’t think so.
Money certainly talks. Orgeron made more than $30 million as the head coach at LSU and is paid to do what he’s doing now. Still, that gravelly Cajun voice draped in purple and gold does feel authentic when he calls LSU the greatest place in the world. He told Kiffin that as the new head coach drove by Tiger Stadium for the first time as the new Tiger coach in December.
He won’t be calling plays or hiring coaches. He won’t be doing press conferences or sitting in the coaches box. But in the quickest buyout to “buy in” transformation in college football history, Orgeron is back in Baton Rouge to help.
More LSU Stories
