Why Les Miles would make the most sense

Cougar Football
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Just want to get everyone’s thoughts on Les Miles. Here are some obvious reasons why.

  1. He is probably looking for a place to stay at and retire, since he has already been in the P5 and done that
  2. He has strong recruiting ties in Texas and Louisiana
  3. He may be a defensive minded coach but if he could pull a good OC, then that would work perfectly
  4. He’s won a national and SEC championships
  5. He wouldn’t have to rebuild in Houston, just continue moving the #HTownTakeOver train

Honestly, from a long term perspective, he makes the most sense if he’s willing to sign a high buyout contract with us and is motivated.

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As I said yesterday, he has to be at the top of the list. Tillman put his name out there yesterday afternoon so I would have to think some discussions are taking place.

I will add another reason to your list. The casual fan knows his name and he would get them excited. We don’t have an Oklahoma game to sell tickets this season. Les would do that.

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Agreed! But I’m sure the Texas Tech, Rice, Memphis, Navy and SMU games are going to be packed (hopefully) regardless. Les would lure more for the other games for sure! Maybe some more season ticket holders too.

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he works for me only if
he can get us playing regular sec matchups because of his relationships…which could eventually get us into the sec.

if sec gets used to us being around every year then it might be easier to get in.

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Could absolutely see Les keeping Major as OC, if he were to come here.

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I’m warming up to him as well. He should be in our top 3, imo.

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I have a hard time narrowing it to three, but Miles should definitely be on the short list. Now if you told me he had a magical way to keep CTO and CMA as coordinators I would say pay the man!!!
Since I am now in fantasy land let’s add Charlie Strong as a defensive position coach getting paid $1 just because he wants to shove it in UT’s face. Would never ever, ever, happen, but in my fantasy, we sure would recruit well. hahaha

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Even if Les Miles’ offensive struggles continued, I would think a subpar SEC offense could handle the AAC defenses.

Is that nonsense or am I onto something?

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Depends on the Oline. we would have gotten crushed this year trying that. With a better Oline that would make us a lot like Temple. Being 9-3 or 10-2 each year isn’t bad, but you want a little extra edge when you get to the championship game. The good teams eat up vanilla offenses.

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I would think Dana Holgorsen is the best fit because of his offense. Les Miles is in the next tier with Lincoln Riley and Sonny Dykes. Say no to Art Briles.

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I’m going to play devil’s advocate a bit here because I have some reservations about Miles. First, I’ll say I agree he’s an awesome recruiter and has a great defensive mind. If he would agree to find an awesome OC and stay the heck out of the way on offense, I’d feel better about him as a candidate. But we’ve seen over the years, and I have some LSU buddies who confirm, that he just likes to meddle with things. And he’s either notoriously bad with recruiting QBs, or really bad at finding people to develop them. I don’t want to see our offense take a 10 year step back in time.

The bigger issue for me is the motivation factor. The benefit of having a coach who leaves after 2-3 years is that the coach is ambitious and ultra-motivated to get to the next level. I’m concerned that if we hire an older coach who has “been there done that” he won’t be nearly as motivated. I certainly don’t want to take a step back to the Tony Levine mediocrity era. We’ve made too much progress to do that and have to start over again.

I’m in the same camp as @cougarfan. My preference is Holgerson and do everything we can to keep Orlando as DC.

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He’s my top choice for the reasons listed. But my only apprehension is his play calling. We won so many big games the past couple of years because of genius defensive fronts, properly timed trick plays and good balance on play in general. I’d want serious coordinators. I think that his name and connections could get us that too.

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I believe a coach is less motivated after being fired than he would be if he’s trying to climb the ladder. Mackovic at Arizona and Akers at Purdue? Other than Gene Stallings, who are coaches that have done well after being fired at another university?

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He will be motivated. He will want to show he should never have been fired after averaging over nine wins a season at LSU.

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Hayden Fry made himself a HOFer with his stint at Iowa after getting dismissed by SMU.

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Mackovic didn’t do well in the first place. Akers was at Purdue, enough said.

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Mackovic did pretty well at Illinois. Hayden Fry is a great example but he was 43 when he left SMU and went to North Texas. He was 49 when he left North Texas for Iowa. Miles seems to have a lot of “fire in his belly” like Dr Khator does so maybe there’s a chance.

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Yes, to this.

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Holgerson & Miles as real good possibilities. My personal dark horse would be Neal Brown (coach from Troy), but would need to have a great supporting cast of coaches. Don’t know how the fans would react to an unknown. His ties to Texas was his 2 year stint as the OC/QB coach at Texas Tech.

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To me the best part about him is that he works local recruiting the most and yet when he did venture out of Louisiana, it was Texas recruits more than the rest. He would even pull one or two 4 stars out of the Houston area just about every other year. I think he could out recruit Herman in Houston for top players as our head coach.

The thing people need to realize that he would most likely not offer OC and DC to Applewhite and Orlando. He will probably also go with a pro style offense because pro style offenses attract pro caliber recruits that have an eye on the NFL.