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Sunday, January 6, 2008
LSU’s Miles has a nose for spotlight
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
New Orleans — Six weeks ago, Les Miles was just another college coach who’d never won a conference championship. Now he’s ubiquitous. He’s the man in the hat, the gambler with the golden gut, the loyal Wolverine who spurned Michigan. He’s the guy who ended the irregular 45-second pregame briefing in the Georgia Dome with the famously insincere, “Have a great day.”
On Sunday Miles met again with his good buddies in the press, and this time he offered what seemed a sincere thank you. He said he appreciated “the number of stories to come out” about his LSU Tigers in the run-up to tonight’s BCS title game, and he even lauded the media’s “effort to get different and quality stories.”
Then this: “Whatever you do in covering me, I’d appreciate if you minimize it.”
And that last bit, it must be said, rang hollow. To see Les Miles now is to observe a man living high, wide and handsome. Jim Tressel is a great coach, but his interviews have all the brio of calculus class. When Miles gets going, and lately he has been operating at full vocal throttle, one response can consume five minutes. Indeed, he went on at such length after one question Sunday that he had to stop himself by saying, “I could go on.”
As football men go, Miles is fairly intriguing. With the big hat — when he deigns to doff his white LSU cap, you’ll note the thinning brown hair toward the back — and the square jaw, he looks like most every other coach to come from Ohio (where he grew up) and Michigan (where he played and apprenticed). But he has a lively mind and a deft, if slightly odd, way with words.
An example: “I hope we back off on emotion [for tonight’s game], to be honest with you. I hope we reach the field with a nice clean framework.”
And another, this in reference to the possibility that Ohio State might deploy Antonio Henton as a change-of-pace quarterback: “We’ve seen the tape on him. We’ll have a feel for his tendencies once he steps on the field at the opponent’s request.”
A minute later, a reporter began a question thusly: “Les, you’re known as being old-school …”
Miles, interjecting: “How do I still get the old-school moniker? I still have humor.”
That’s true. He does. The “have a great day” signoff was the funniest moment of a funny ol’ football season. (Mike Gundy’s much-viewed rant was amusing only in the sense that he made himself seem a braying donkey.) And Miles’ less famous press session of the day his Tigers won the SEC championship — the postgame one, in which he pledged himself to LSU despite his obvious love for Michigan — was darn near poignant.
The Michigan stuff keeps coming up. At Saturday’s media day, Miles admitted his lingering love for the Great Midwest but noted, “What I don’t miss is having to scrape my windshield.” On Sunday he admitted tearing up when he saw his mentor, the late Bo Schembechler, on an HBO special about the Ohio State-Michigan series.
Whether Miles was ever as close to coaching Michigan as Kirk Herbstreit would have us believe might never be known, but it’s clear Miles hasn’t exactly recoiled from the crush of publicity. “I’m a guy who likes to support his team and coach his team but who stays on the perimeter,” he said, protesting. “I’ve always enjoyed the position of being a coach and not being an issue.”
These past six weeks — heck, the whole wild LSU season — he has been both. He’s the wild man who kept going for it on fourth down against Florida and who ordered up the long pass that decided the epic Auburn game at 0:01 of the fourth quarter. He’s the coach of a “damn strong football team” (another Les-ism) who’s on a giddy run of great days.
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