The first part of LSU week for many Alabama football fans has been spent on Playoff thoughts. That is understandable, given the state of the LSU football program. The Bengal Tigers have a talented roster of highly recruited players. But the roster has been depleted by transfers and injuries.
The weakest link in the LSU program currently is its lame-duck coach, Ed Orgeron. The blame goes back to former LSU AD, Joe Alleva, who hired a man massively ill-suited to being the CEO of an elite college football program.
The shock is not that it has fallen apart for LSU. In hiring Orgeron, the falling apart was inevitable. The shock is LSU won a National Championship before the falling apart happened.
For a Sports Illustrated story, Ross Dellenger interviewed several people with inside knowledge of the LSU program.
"They paint a picture of a program that began tilting toward disaster last summer during a mishandling of a player-led social injustice march. Others cite Orgeron’s eccentric behavior, both private and public, that remind many of his tenure as Ole Miss’s coach, which ended in 2007."
Had the 2019 LSU team not won a National Championship, Orgeron would have been fired sooner. The delay only led to further decay of the program.
Ed Orgeron will visit Alabama Football one more time
Before Coach O was fired, it was stated he would never coach in Bryant-Denny again. That was incorrect. He will; one more time. It will be the last time. Orgeron will not have an opportunity to be rehabbed by Nick Saban. O is such damaged goods, it is hard to imagine him even getting a career lifeline from a Sun Belt program.
LSU had the best college football team in the nation in 2019. Orgeron was a mixture of recruiter and cheerleader. LSU was capably coached by Dave Aranda and Joe Brady. After taking down Alabama Football in Tuscaloosa, Orgeron was less than gracious in victory. A better word to describe him that day was classless. Orgeron threw out expletives and wild claims about future beatdowns of the Tide, including in recruiting. After the game, LSU players shouted to Alabama football recruits in the stands that joining the Tide would make them losers.
Brian Robinson Jr. and other Crimson Tide players remember well LSU’s post-game behavior in 2019. This week Robinson said,
"That’s something that we keep lingering. We make sure people know just the disrespect that was with that, how it made us feel and everything we have to do to make sure that doesn’t happen again."
The main question for Saturday night is how much payback is enough – for Brian Robinson Jr. and other players – and Crimson Tide fans. Some of us believe no winning margin is too great.