5. Les Miles
Miles arrived at LSU replacing Nick Saban, who left for the Miami Dolphins. What made Miles an attractive option was he guided Oklahoma State to three consecutive bowl games, something the program hadn’t achieved since the 1983-1985 seasons.
With the foundation set by Saban, Miles was able to successfully build on top of and successfully won a national championship in the crazy 2007 season that saw the two-loss Tigers win it all.
LSU didn’t miss a beat over the next few seasons as Miles reloaded that set up a 2011 team, that may have been his strongest ever at LSU. After defeating Alabama in the regular season 9-6 in overtime, Saban’s team was able to force a rematch in the BCS National Championship.
The Crimson Tide defense exploited LSU’s weakness, and that was its offense. Alabama only allowed LSU to cross midfield once in the contest and yielded 92 total yards of offense.
Alabama won the national championship 21-0, the first time LSU lost in New Orleans since the 1987 Sugar Bowl.
Miles seemingly never was able to recapture the magic and always seemed to fall short against Alabama. This is what would cost him his job, and with LSU fans always seeing “What could have been with Saban?” With their former coach becoming the greatest coach of all time at their division rival, winning championship after championship, it wasn’t a winning situation for Miles at all.
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4. Larry Coker
Whenever I put on the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary The U, I am always quickly reminded why Larry Coker is on this list.
Miami wasn’t in a perfect place to replace Butch Davis, who left shortly after the Sugar Bowl for the Cleveland Browns. The players insisted in the documentary they told the administration not to pursue Barry Alvarez, which, in hindsight, wasn’t a good move.
They settled on Larry Coker and the proper analogy to describe the situation Coker got for a first time head coach is like giving a 16 year old who just got their drivers license a Ferrari as their first car. The Ferrari-driving Coker got in his first season was the 2001 Miami Hurricanes – a team most consider the most talented and greatest of all time.
Coker delivered in Year 1, capturing the national championship. He won 24 of his first 25 games, with the first loss coming in the controversial Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State.
Once Miami moved from the Big East to the ACC, Coker’s squad also moved further and further away from those dominant teams he had helped create.
Miami continued to crater under Coker, where questions of leadership began to arise following the embarrassment on the field to LSU in the 2005 Peach Bowl, where they lost 40-3. A fight in the tunnel embarrassed the program off the field. The lowlights continued into the 2006 season with the now infamous FIU brawl on the field.
Even with a 60-15 record in Miami, the decline following the 2003 season kept administrators uneasy with Coker, and he was fired following the season.
I never felt Coker was the long term solution for Miami and that ultimately was played out. Miami needed someone who had experience being a head coach to lead that team. It wasn’t for the teams that were incredibly loaded with talent. It was when that talent left that things took a turn for the worst.
When it did leave, Coker was unable to properly reload and manage the program, and this is why he was fired.
3. Gene Chizik
The first time I heard Gene Chizik’s name prominently was during the 2006 clash between No. 1 Ohio State and No. 2 Texas in DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium.
During the telecast, Brent Musburger, who was notorious for running on some minor detail and doing it ad nauseam, kept bringing up the “Gene Chizik win streak,” because Chizik-coached teams were riding a 29-game winning streak dating back to the 2003 Iron Bowl against Alabama. Musburger, even with Ohio State controlling the game 24-7, painted a picture that Chizik was a modern day defensive coaching prodigy that we all needed to keep an eye on.
Apparently, Iowa State took notice and took a shot on Chizik.
The gamble didn’t pay off really well when you take a look at his final season at Iowa State. The Cyclones won their first two games against South Dakota State and Kent State before reeling off 10 consecutive losses to finish the season 2–10. The “defensive prodigy” had guided Iowa State to rankings of 111th in total defense, 115th in passing defense, and 95th in rushing defense.
Somehow, not finishing last in these departments was attractive enough for Auburn to poach Chizik from Iowa State. I am pretty certain no tears were shed in Ames at the news.
The greatest day in Chizik’s career was when Blinn College quarterback Cam Newton decided to go to Auburn instead of Mississippi State or Oklahoma. The dual-threat quarterback had an all-time season for Auburn, winning the Heisman Trophy, winning the Iron Bowl in dramatic fashion forever known as “The Cam-Back,” and taking home the program’s first national championship since 1957.
Chizik was unable to recapture the magic of the 2010 season, where Auburn would lose nine consecutive games against ranked opponents between the 2011 and 2012 seasons.
The final curtain on Chizik’s times in The Plains was a 49-0 laugher in the Iron Bowl against Alabama.
2. Jimbo Fisher
My colleague Scott Salomon recently wrote that time has ran on for Fisher in College Station after a 48-33 loss to Miami in a game Fisher desperately needed to win.
Fisher is one of the best recruiters in the nation, usually residing in the Top 10 with his recruiting classes. He has landed some major recruits, notably Jameis Winston and Dalvin Cook. But outside of Winston and Cook, Fisher has yet to live up to the hype that got him jobs at Florida State and Texas A&M.
At Florida State, his ego and not willing to collaborate with others created a major schism that sent the FSU program into a major downward spiral, and Fisher exited when he could.
Texas A&M is paying Fisher nearly $100 million to win championships, not go 8-4 every year. I wrote last October documenting the toxicity of Jimbo Fisher at Florida State and why we shouldn’t be surprised at what is currently happening at Texas A&M.
Why Fisher is ranked where he is, he is expected to win national championships, and I use championships plural because that is the expectation. During his time at Texas A&M, he has reeled in five consecutive Top 10 classes, with the Class of 2024 in good position to be his sixth in a row. With the amount of money and resources afforded to Fisher, there is nothing that cannot be accommodated.
When a coach has everything at his disposal – fertile recruiting territory and great recruiting classes, money, facilities, etc. and a coach like Fisher, who has won a national championship prior, cannot breakthrough, you have to assume Fisher’s 2013 championship with Florida State was a fluke.
1. Ed Orgeron
The difference between a lot of coaches on this list and Orgeron is that no one else on this list went out on a “blaze of glory” as Orgeron did.
For a coach who was looking for redemption after going 10-25 at Ole Miss, and was rejected at Southern California going 6-2 during an interim role, Orgeron wanted to be a head coach. After joining Les Miles’ staff in 2015, it wouldn’t be long before Orgeron would jump into an interim coaching role once again after Miles was fired after an 18-13 loss against Auburn in 2016.
Orgeron won six of eight games in relief, including a Citrus Bowl win against Louisville, and the interim tag was removed. The Louisiana native had his chance at redemption.
Over the next few seasons, Orgeron and staff assembled talent that would be one of the greatest teams in the history of the sport in the 2019 LSU Tigers. Quarterback Joe Burrow and wide receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson fueled a Tigers team that would go 15-0, defeat seven ranked opponents, and average 48.4 points per game.
It would be during this run of dominance that Orgeron would lose sight of who he was. According to The Athletic’s Brody Miller, Orgeron allowed the spoils of success to get to him. Orgeron, with his new six-year $42 million contract, would flirt constantly with women, and no woman was out of bounds. It included flirtations with the spouse of an LSU administrator at a gas station.
On the field, Orgeron wasn’t focused on football, and it showed in the rapid decline, with LSU going 11-11 in his final two seasons in Baton Rouge.
His firing Orgeron jokes about to this day, “They said, ‘Coach, you’ve got $17.1 million on your contract. We’re gonna give it to you.’ I said, ‘What time do you want me to leave, and what door do you want me out of, brother?”
Orgeron had all the makings to be really successful at LSU. The way he imploded by not being able to manage expectations is why he tops our list as the worst coach to win a national championship.
