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Rabalais: In a pivotal year for Les Miles, LSU needs these recruits to pan out
Recruiting is referred to as an inexact science.
It’s a statement that does injustice to inexact sciences, like meteorology or coming up with a flu vaccine that actually works (excuse me while I reach for another tissue).
Yet every year, fans and us media types sift through the college football classes on National Signing Day — itself a misnomer since Wednesday was merely the start of the national signing period for football — as though they were quarterly corporate earnings reports. From that, we try to determine how hot, how strong a program is going to be this year and in the seasons to come.
There’s no way to know. When it comes to LSU, you can see once again that the Tigers pulled in a consensus top-10 recruiting class, which pretty much has become the acceptable benchmark for the program. This though we know with almost 100 percent certainty that some of Wednesday’s biggest prospects will be busts (longtime LSU fans now recall the name of once-time “can’t miss” bust Chris Pettaway) and some nondescript signees (I’m thinking of you, Jacob Hester) will be stars.
Recruiting is a test. This whole year will be a series of tests for Les Miles and LSU football, whose relevance as a national power has been drawn increasingly into question (the Tigers have gone a pedestrian 28-12 dating to the 2011 BCS national championship game).
The first test was replacing defensive coordinator John Chavis after he made the lateral shift to Texas A&M. Miles doubled down. He hired Kevin Steele to replace him, and he hired überrecruiter Ed Orgeron to take over as defensive line coach, bumping Brick Haley into an administrative role.
There are legitimate questions about Steele’s strength as a defensive coordinator, but his reputation is that of a better recruiter than Chavis. There may not be a better recruiter anywhere than Orgeron, who on very short notice landed four-star Arden Key, a consensus top-100 national prospect from near Atlanta once committed to South Carolina.
One overriding fact to remember about recruiting: No one ever loses. Everyone declares a win the first Wednesday in February. The losses are for the real season this fall.
Miles, like all of his college coaching peers, claimed victory. If he didn’t, I’m sure he’d be violating the pirates’, er, coaches’ code somewhere.
“We got a balance of speed and size and character — quality people throughout,” Miles said of LSU’s 25 signees. “This is a class that in my view will help us compete for championships, and certainly the College Football Playoffs.”
Read more....http://theadvocate.
-----------It’s a statement that does injustice to inexact sciences, like meteorology or coming up with a flu vaccine that actually works (excuse me while I reach for another tissue).
Yet every year, fans and us media types sift through the college football classes on National Signing Day — itself a misnomer since Wednesday was merely the start of the national signing period for football — as though they were quarterly corporate earnings reports. From that, we try to determine how hot, how strong a program is going to be this year and in the seasons to come.
There’s no way to know. When it comes to LSU, you can see once again that the Tigers pulled in a consensus top-10 recruiting class, which pretty much has become the acceptable benchmark for the program. This though we know with almost 100 percent certainty that some of Wednesday’s biggest prospects will be busts (longtime LSU fans now recall the name of once-time “can’t miss” bust Chris Pettaway) and some nondescript signees (I’m thinking of you, Jacob Hester) will be stars.
Recruiting is a test. This whole year will be a series of tests for Les Miles and LSU football, whose relevance as a national power has been drawn increasingly into question (the Tigers have gone a pedestrian 28-12 dating to the 2011 BCS national championship game).
The first test was replacing defensive coordinator John Chavis after he made the lateral shift to Texas A&M. Miles doubled down. He hired Kevin Steele to replace him, and he hired überrecruiter Ed Orgeron to take over as defensive line coach, bumping Brick Haley into an administrative role.
There are legitimate questions about Steele’s strength as a defensive coordinator, but his reputation is that of a better recruiter than Chavis. There may not be a better recruiter anywhere than Orgeron, who on very short notice landed four-star Arden Key, a consensus top-100 national prospect from near Atlanta once committed to South Carolina.
One overriding fact to remember about recruiting: No one ever loses. Everyone declares a win the first Wednesday in February. The losses are for the real season this fall.
Miles, like all of his college coaching peers, claimed victory. If he didn’t, I’m sure he’d be violating the pirates’, er, coaches’ code somewhere.
“We got a balance of speed and size and character — quality people throughout,” Miles said of LSU’s 25 signees. “This is a class that in my view will help us compete for championships, and certainly the College Football Playoffs.”
Read more....http://theadvocate.
Thomas Williams · Top Commenter: This column truly does writes about the crux of the matter because no matter how talented you are as a player or coach, if you don't show up for work what good are you?
That if these 2015 recruited football player don't pan out Les Miles will lose his job coaching LSU. So yes indeed the Les Miles coached college football program is truly at a cross roads in this coming college football season. Because of the heartbreaking loses from last season is looming like a Sword of Damocles over Les Miles for real if LSU keeps losing college football games like that again.
“We signed five offensive linemen and Grimes was a point guy on all of them,” LSU coach Les Miles said. “He just really did a great job.”
From a ESPN column: “LSU’s coaching staff closed out this class of linemen with a flourish. Within the past week, Grimes added a pair of ESPN 300 offensive linemen -- Chidi Valentine-Okeke and Toby Weathersby, a onetime Texas commitment who announced his decision on Wednesday -- to go along with previous commitments from guard Maea Teuhema and tackles Adrian Magee and George Brown Jr.”
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