Like it is

Orgeron needs to get across points to keep job

LSU interim head coach Ed Orgeron works the sideline in the second half of an NCAA college football game against Alabama in Baton Rouge, La., Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Alabama won 10-0. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The Chicago Cubs win the World Series. Donald Trump is elected president.

If this isn't the year of upsets and surprises, then there may never be one.

What next, Ed Orgeron named head coach of the LSU Tigers? It should go without saying that would be a dream come true for the native of Larose, La., a town of 7,000 planted deep in Cajun country.

Orgeron is the interim head coach of the Tigers, having replaced Les Miles four games ago. He's won three and the lone loss was 10-0 to the mighty Alabama Crimson Tide, the No. 1 team in the nation and the defending national champs.

For three quarters, LSU held Alabama scoreless. Unfortunately the Tide held an unimaginative, basically dull LSU offense scoreless for four quarters.

That's why Orgeron remains a long shot to have interim removed from his job description.

The Tigers Nation is ready for an offense that isn't run between the tackles. Saturday night in Death Valley, Miles might as well have been wandering the sidelines.

LSU had just six first downs and 125 yards of total offense. Leonard Fournette, the preseason favorite to win the Heisman Trophy, had 35 yards rushing on 17 carries, mostly between the tackles.

The Tigers got into Alabama territory twice, once on an interception that was returned to the Tide 33 and once on a short punt that was downed at the Alabama 42. Both of those were in the first half. In the second half, the home team had a net of 20 yards of offense.

The wildly enthusiastic and most likely well-lubricated crowd loved the defense, not so much the offense.

Orgeron -- like Miles, who sounded like a broken record the past five years -- had claimed he was going to open up the offense, and he has the receivers and running backs to do it, but how does LSU not have a SEC quarterback on campus?

Perhaps if Orgeron wasn't still wearing the three years as head coach at Ole Miss around his neck he would be getting a little more love, but 10-25 knocked him back to an assistant coach in a hurry.

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Six years later in 2013, he stepped in for the fired Lane Kiffin -- who also is extremely interested in the LSU job -- and went 6-2 as interim head coach at Southern Cal.

All that got him was a job as defensive line coach at LSU.

It's not just Ole Miss that has cast a shadow on the fiery but likable Orgeron.

Stories ran rampant about him and his staff in Oxford, where there are no secrets, especially if you try to drive circles around The Square after a very long happy hour.

There was the story about his first day on the job when he called a team meeting, ripped off his shirt and challenged every player to a wrestling match.

Of him banging a big bass drum. And profanity that reverberated even louder.

Stories of his younger days and alcohol and bar disruptions have not been denied.

Now, he says he learned his lessons the hard way. That he's changed. That his second wife, Kelly, and their three boys have helped him mature.

He admitted that as a head coach he tried to use the challenges he regularly put to defensive linemen as an assistant coach, and it didn't work at Ole Miss.

Orgeron does seem more calm, and he jokes that LSU is his first job where he doesn't have an accent.

He's also acted like a head coach the past five weeks more than at any time in his life.

This is the year of the upset, but if Orgeron is going to be part of that history, he needs to do more than win out with games at Arkansas and Texas A&M with Florida at Baton Rouge in between; he needs to find a way to put points on the board.

Sports on 11/10/2016