Les Miles, "The Hat" (official thread)

[Nutriaitch]

Originally Posted by Electron Boy

right now i honestly wish that i had paid more attention to the lead up to the alamo bowl in 2004. i think we were 13 point underdogs in that game, so something had to have happened that miles didn't understand or prepare for. i mean, i realize teddy played a great game and zwick played one of the more solid games of his career, but wasn't the okie state run defense supposed to be really good? and then lydell of all people ran up 99 or 100 on em?

I just pulled up the ESPN preview from that game. ESPN - Oklahoma State Cowboys vs. Ohio State Buckeyes Preview, December 29 2004 - NCAA College Football

Y'all were a 4 point dog, but I have no clue why. Look at the "Records when Scoring" chart on the right hand side. Y'all had a better record across the board, regardless of scores. Plus, y'all gave up nearly 100 fewer points than they did during the regular season. They came in on a 2-4 streak, and y'all came in on a 4-1 streak.

People have accused Miles of looking to BR, instead of coaching, but I don't think we had even contacted anyone yet when this game was played. Saban accepted the Dolphins job late Christmas evening, only 4 days before kick-off of the Alamo Bowl.

[Electron Boy]

Originally Posted by Nutriaitch

I just pulled up the ESPN preview from that game. ESPN - Oklahoma State Cowboys vs. Ohio State Buckeyes Preview, December 29 2004 - NCAA College Football

Y'all were a 4 point dog, but I have no clue why. Look at the "Records when Scoring" chart on the right hand side. Y'all had a better record across the board, regardless of scores. Plus, y'all gave up nearly 100 fewer points than they did during the regular season. They came in on a 2-4 streak, and y'all came in on a 4-1 streak.

People have accused Miles of looking to BR, instead of coaching, but I don't think we had even contacted anyone yet when this game was played. Saban accepted the Dolphins job late Christmas evening, only 4 days before kick-off of the Alamo Bowl.

hmm, that's weird, i'm not sure why i thought we were 13 point underdogs. but thanks for the info, that fills in some gaps. les miles definately deserves some of the blame for how his team played, but given the kind of flux our team was in at that point (especially the offense), i can't imagine it was easy to gameplan for us.

i mean, teddy at QB? i know it had been talked about but i was still pretty suprised when it actually happened.

[Nutriaitch]

Originally Posted by Electron Boy

les miles definately deserves some of the blame for how his team played,

I really don't remember anything about it (which is why I don't think we had ever spoken to Miles yet). If there were even rumors about it yet, I would have tuned in to the game to check him out. Reading the Articles (preview and recap) it seemed more focused on OSU (y'all) than OSU (them).

[MaxBuck]

Originally Posted by Steve19

source

So incredibly NASCAR...or is something sinister and much more fishy going on?

source

source

So, you're saying Vladimir Putin will be the next Wolverine head coach?

[Electron Boy]

Originally Posted by Nutriaitch

I really don't remember anything about it (which is why I don't think we had ever spoken to Miles yet). If there were even rumors about it yet, I would have tuned in to the game to check him out. Reading the Articles (preview and recap) it seemed more focused on OSU (y'all) than OSU (them).

well, it was talked about either earlier in this thread of in another thread, but okie state just seemed to seize up after the first quarter. their star RB was barely given the ball at all, and they played just generally listless football while we ran circles around them.

now, do i think that if we somehow jump out to a decent lead in the NC game that LSU will fold? hell no. les miles may not be the most cerebral coach ever, but he's not a bad coach by any stretch. it'd just be interesting to see his coaching during that game again.

and as far as the articles go, if you've got two fair to middling teams, one on a big downslope and one who just pulled off a gigantic upset with a now-suspended QB, it's not hard to predict who'll get the most press.

[rocketman]

It wasn't so much Les Miles making coaching mistakes that was the cause of them getting blown out by us, it was their offense turning the ball over. He threw a pick in the first quarter, and then their RB fumbled a snap later on, giving us a short field. If Miles should have been blamed for anything, it would have been not game planning for Ginn - but who could have game planned for that? Ginn had never taken snaps at QB before, and at that point in his career, he was a relatively unknown commodity.

For LSU fans that might not know, Ginn was in at QB because, ironically, Tressel didn't want to burn Boeckman's redshirt after Zwick injured his hamstring early in the game.

[Nutriaitch]

Originally Posted by rocketman

For LSU fans that might not know, Ginn was in at QB because, ironically, Tressel didn't want to burn Boeckman's redshirt after Zwick injured his hamstring early in the game.

That's a classy move by Tressel. In '01 Saban burned Travis Daniels resgirt in the 4th quarter of the SEC CG. Yeah we won the game and the Sugar, but hell we could have used that year of eligibility.

[MaizeandBlue]

MLive.com: Everything Michigan

CARTY: When Les Miles' agent reached out to Bill Martin Friday, he got silence in return

by Jim Carty | The Ann Arbor News Tuesday December 04, 2007, 10:55 PM


AP PhotoLSU coach Les Miles listens to a reporter's question during a news conference at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta on Friday.
On Friday night, Les Miles had a problem.
While most of the media speculated the Louisiana State football coach was about to jump to the University of Michigan to succeed Lloyd Carr, neither Miles nor his agent, George Bass, had heard from anyone connected to Michigan in any capacity.
Bill Martin, Michigan's athletic director, had received permission Wednesday to talk to Miles after Saturday's Southeastern Conference title game, but had not called to set up a meeting or schedule a phone call.
LSU, meanwhile, was pushing hard behind the scenes to keep Miles, offering a multi-year contract extension that would boost his pay by millions.
Forget all you've heard about secret deals using third-party intermediaries between Michigan and Miles. Bass said it's just not true.
Miles had no idea if Michigan really wanted him.
So Bass decided to ask.
He said he called Martin's cell phone on Friday and left a message. He just wanted to know where Miles stood.
Then, when he didn't hear back, the agent said he called Martin again.
"The (LSU) deal was so good that we couldn't just wait," Bass said via phone Tuesday. "I didn't know if we were one of the candidates in the pool at that time. There was just no communication."
Where was Martin? One source places him in Florida, at the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo. Wherever he was, he didn't call back.
We all know what happened next.
ESPN began reporting Saturday morning that Miles had reached a deal with Michigan. Miles' LSU players began to plaintively ask him at pre-game chapel at the team hotel if he was leaving them for the Wolverines.
Miles, irate at the erroneous report, told LSU officials he was staying, then called an angry pre-game news conference to rip ESPN and say he'd never talked to anyone about leaving. Soon afterward, LSU issued a press release saying he'd agreed in principal to a new contract.
That was it, game over.
Miles wasn't coming to Michigan.
And while some in the media tried to portray the former Michigan offensive guard as a cynical all-about-the-money guy who'd just used his alma mater and the memory of Bo Schembechler to leverage maximum bank out of LSU, the truth was, he'd essentially done what Michigan wouldn't do.
He called home. Twice.
"He will always love Michigan," Bass said. "It's a place that's very special in his heart. This has been very tough on him."
Why didn't Martin call back? Why hadn't he called Bass already, to set something up, particularly after LSU's athletic director said in a printed report that he had no problem with Martin calling the agent?
Was he at the beach? Out sailing?
Martin did not return a message left on his cell phone Tuesday, and Michigan spokesperson Bruce Madej said the athletic director was attending a football awards dinner in New York. Martin did e-mail that he was "on a fund raising trip for football stadium. Also working on coach search."
There are really only a few explanations for what happened with Miles, though, none of them very good.
Maybe Martin is so old school he refused to deal with an agent.
Maybe Martin believed Michigan is such a special job that Miles would wait as long as was necessary to talk to him.
Or maybe, it was all a show. Perhaps Martin never really wanted to hire Miles, and asked permission to speak to the LSU coach simply to appease the former Michigan players and the legions of fans who were clamoring for the big-name candidate who bled maize and blue. Perhaps he was also scared off by reports that LSU would pay more than $3 million annually to keep Miles (Michigan, by comparison, paid Carr about half that).
It's hard to say which of those truths would be worse.
The first two mean Martin is in over his head and bumbled away his shot at Miles.
And if it was a show, why?
Why not have the courage of your convictions and publicly rule Miles out? Was it in hope that Miles - encountering silence from Michigan - would take Martin off the hook and rule himself out by taking the LSU deal?
What's clear is that Michigan's athletic director, intentionally or unintentionally, ap