When Ed Orgeron was named head football coach for the Louisiana State Tigers in 2016, the local joke was, “It’s time for the task to entrust the task to someone who doesn’t speak with an accent. “You see, Orgeron is an indigenous Cajun, a hoarse voice; born in the swamp, not far from Baton Rouge. Coach O, as he is called, touched the sensitive fiber of LSU’s fan base, first with its flavor and familiarity, then through victory. The Tigers are the reigning national champions. Now comes the real challenge: protecting a name in the midst of a global pandemic. College football is in existential crisis. This week, when the season is often very advanced, primary meetings were still debating the opportunity and how to organize football this fall. A member of the Southeastern Conference-LSU is advancing. While the team is dealing with COVID protocols and queue conversion, we discovered that Orgeron was making the most of this new authenticity.
Five days a week, for a frantic hour, Ed Orgeron runs the phones inside the war room of LSU’s football field. The pandemic prevents aspiring, more productive colleges from visiting campus, but groups can now call recruits whatever they want.
And Orgeron likes them.
Ed Orger on a phone call with a recruit: How’s your mom?
He is a coach who has carved a niche for himself both for his sense of recruiting and for his X’s and O’s.
Ed Orgeron during a phone call with a rookie: And then come play for LSU, right?
Recruit: I hope so, sir.
Ed Orgeron: What do you mean, hopefully?
This sports edition of quick quotes: in LSU, it’s called “Power Hour”.
Ed Orger on a phone call with a rookie: Okay, you know we love you.
Jon Wertheim: What is time? (Laughter) You’re laughing.
Ed Orgeron: I love force time, man. You know, it’s a lot of energy, man, and those phones are exploding, and I can communicate, the other day, we, in 30 minutes, communicate with 31 recruits.
Jon Wertheim: Why is it important?
Ed Orgeron: You know, it’s constant contact with those kids in those days. Before you can call them once a week, however, if you don’t call them every single day, if you don’t text them every day, you don’t text them to each and every one of them. and every day, infrequently two or three times a day, they’re going to think you’ve forgotten them.
Jon Wertheim: If he says no?
Ed Orgeron: I’m going down a road. Not today, but I’m going down a road.
Jon Wertheim: Are you going to take this to LSU?
Ed Orgeron: You’re going to have to tell me that not a thousand times, one is enough.
You can call 2019 the “year of yes” for the state of Louisiana. The Tigers crowned an undefeated season by winning the national championship. His quarterback, Joe Burrow, won the Heisman Trophy; another Tiger won the most productive receiver award, that’s Ja’Marr Chase. In April, NFL groups selected 14 LSU players, tying a fashion record for a school. The sun rises and sets here with Coach O. He didn’t get much lap of victory, unless you counted five in the morning to go to the paintings, the radio sounded. Orgeron came only to paint.
We were invited to LSU football for a few days in August, when Louisiana had one of the country’s COVID rates.
The players were back in the gym, but they weren’t educating in a bubble. Everyone here is going home at night. The team monitors player temperature, manages normal COVID controls, isolates positive coVID controls, and quarantines those who come into contact with the virus.
LSU revealed numbers, however, Orgeron said this week that most of its players have had COVID.
Jon Wertheim: How much of your life is true to this virus?Ed Orgeron: What we do, we have a protocol here. And I am. Whatever they tell me to do, I do, and then I train. And really, my TV hasn’t been on for six weeks.
Jon Wertheim: Why is that?
Ed Orgeron: I know a lot of things are happening there, and look, I get it. And for now, my job is to coach this football team.
Jon Wertheim: And you were frank. You’re there to be football this fall.
Ed Orgeron: Yes, yes. I think football is smart for everyone, I’ve noticed them practicing and they’re not in poor health, I’ve noticed they’re in poor health. It lasts a few days and comes back, you know, they’re quarantined for 10 days. But I ask them, “How bad were you?” He said, “Coach, I had a little cough. “So I think young players, when they’re in poor health, quickly.
Jon Wertheim: Did you get the concept that there won’t be football this fall?
Ed Orgeron: Yes, I don’t let it get in my mind.
Jon Wertheim: Don’t even do it.
Ed Orgeron: No, no. But I know it can happen. I know at LSU we got those guys in a position to play, we don’t blink. We’re in a position.
Even in those early practices, the coach insisted on intensity.
Jon Wertheim: We saw things a little bit there the other day, no bullets, no helmets, no pads.
Ed Orgeron: Yes, yes. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have sanitary towels, but you can have energy.
Jon Wertheim: I realize you use the word power a lot.
Ed Orgeron: Yes.
Jon Wertheim: It’s for you.
Ed Orgeron: Yes.
Jon Wertheim: Why?
Ed Orgeron: Ouais. Je hates calm. I. . . if he’s calm, he’s not smart for me.
There is no calm in his schedule, after a 14-hour day we follow him to a local boxing hall. Orgeron wants to adjust to all the clichés about a football coach and at the same time break molds. For starters, his voice,Orgeron looks like a guy who gargles with crayfish shells and adorns this cajun-accented grater.
We Tyler Shelvin, a defensive lineman.
Jon Wertheim: That voice. (Laughter) Do you still see what he says?
Tyler Shelvin: Yes, sir. I — I can perceive it, because I’m a boy from Louisiana.
Jon Wertheim: Do you imitate your voice on the team?
Tyler Shelvin: Everybody does it.
Jon Wertheim: Do you?
Tyler Shelvin: Let’s see. Hello, Big T.
Jon Wertheim: Are you Big T?
Tyler Shelvin: Yes, I’m Big T.
Ed Orgeron to Tyler Shelvin: Big T – Who was the first to give you a scholarship?
Tyler Shelvin: Coach O.
Jon Wertheim: Have you had that different voice?
Ed Orgeron: You know, I think it’s grown over the years, often when it gets sandy, because it wears out. But I think it’s anything I use as a tool, it’s noisy and demanding. You can take control.
Years of training forged this grater, but the Orgeron accessory was born in the parish of Lafourche, about 120 kilometers down the Baton Rouge swamp. The Orgeron are Cajun, descendants of French Canadians who were exiled to the Louisiana swamps in the 1700s, and have proudly resisted assimilation ever since.
When we stopped, Coach O’s mother, Coco, insisted we eat before we spoke. And, actually, who were we for the seafood okra?
Jon Wertheim: It’s delicious.
Coco Orgeron: Thank you. I’ll take that.
The family circle lived to play football. The late Ed Orgeron Sr. educates local youth on land in front of their home.
Coco Orgeron: Oh, that’s the playground all over the neighborhood, get rid of the 50-yard line and sideline a seto. And every once in a while, if you went up the sideline, you were in the hedges.
His son 6’2″ and 270 pounds at the age of 15, a star player in both attack and defense at the best school. The Tarpones of South Lafourche were the champions of the state of Louisiana in 1977. But every Saturday they were faithful to school football.
Jon Wertheim: What did LSU mean to this family?
Coco Orgeron: It’s a great component of our family circle, but it’s nothing we can go through and move on to the game.
Jon Wertheim: Why not?
Coco Orgeron: We couldn’t, you know, it was a way out, it was expensive, you couldn’t even get a ticket.
When his son asked for tickets to an LSU game, Ed Orgeron Sr. gave the talk in the mood.
Ed Orgeron: He said, “My son, we cannot do it. But let me tell you something. If you stay working, you may not want a price ticket to enter Tiger Stadium. “
Orgeron came in here. LSU awarded him a football scholarship, but the country was in poor health and beaten on the big campus, resigned after two weeks and brought him back to the swamp.
Ed Orgeron: And the next day, my father woke me up at 6am and said, “Come on, let’s go to work,” I dig ditches. And other people were with us in the aspect of the road: go. “You couldn’t stand it. ” It’s the worst day of my life, but my father looked at me and said, “Cava. “
He was digging his way back to Baton Rouge, of course, however, it took him 35 years to travel the 75 miles. First, he transferred to play for Northwestern State, then, after graduating, took volunteer training while walking in the helmet. of a shrimper.
Ed Orgeron: And I’ll never forget it, man, we’re shoveling shrimp five a. m. at 10 p. m. I had a shovel in my hand. And the phone sounded. And he said, “Hey, man, you got a solid training assistant position in Arkansas. Do you need it? I said, “Wait. ” I took the Shrimp Shovel Array . . . Shoomp. La threw him in the Bayou, and I said, “Oh my God. He said, “All right, man. You’ll have to be here on Monday. “I said, “I have a query for you,” he said?” I said, “Where’s Arkansas, man?
He spent the next quarter of a century freaking out in school football, giving up Miami while battling alcoholism. Sober, he says, for 20 years, Orgeron has suffered his percentage of punches in the profession. In 2013, despite his good fortune as usC’s interim coach, he denied the position full-time.
Jon Wertheim: Do you want to hear this story I hear?
Ed Orgeron: What is it?
Jon Wertheim: The players enjoyed you. The enthusiasts enjoyed you. The coaches enjoyed you. And the senior said, “We — we want the kind of person who has golf clubs in their trunk. “
Ed Orgeron: Exactly. Now IArray . . . I’m a country club boy.
Jon Wertheim: Where you come from, even your Array. . . your accessoryArray . . .
Ed Orgeron: Yes.
Jon Wertheim: . . . influenced this decision?
Ed Orgeron: Sure. There’s nothing about it.
Jon Wertheim: What are some of the misconceptions or misconceptions that other people have about the Cajun population?
Ed Orgeron: stupid. It’s not worth it. Not in the world.
In Louisiana, Coach O is not only understood, but appreciated. Orgeron was hired as an LSU assistant in 2015 and promoted to head coach the following year, earning an annual salary that has now increased to $7 million. And Orgeron consolidated their prestige, when the Tigers defeated their rival Alabama for the first time in eight years, delighting the fans, one in particular.
Jon Wertheim: What do you think of LSU’s victory over Alabama last year?
Coco Orgeron: You know, I love his stadium. I don’t care what other people say, they’re a little noisy and noisy. But when we won, I enjoyed living in hell (RISAS)
Jon Wertheim: I have an idea what it’s going to have to be like to sit on that couch and watch a game with you.
Coco Orgeron: Get down. (Laughter)
And yet, despite all the features of a fairy tale, the story is not entirely ordered. Days after our visit, USA Today reported that in 2016, an LSU player allegedly sexually assaulted two classmates. Orgeron, then an assistant coach at the school. He told us he wasn’t aware of the alleged assault.
More broadly, Orgeron runs a high-level program at a time when the ethics of big-budget school sports are questioned. Some hard football systems generate more than $100 million in annual revenue, basically through giant TV rights contracts.
The incentive for schools to save this season and contract the pandemic is clear, the incentive for players is less clear.
Jon Wertheim: These players are . . . they don’t get paid, they’re young, they don’t have unions. You think you’re asking them too much?
Ed Orgeron: No, I don’t think so. I. . . I really don’t. I don’t think so. And look, let me tell you something about these unpaid things and everything. When you sign, you get, like me, a chance at life.
Jon Wertheim: A lot of money is going to be invested in this show, but do they have a chance?
Ed Orgeron: They get an education. They’re going to the net. A lot of our boys go through, move on to the NFL and make a lot of money, but those are the next steps.
But some players who overcate the threat, remember Ja’Marr Chase, the award-winning open receiver, and Tyler Shelvin, the lineman?A few weeks after our visit, the two did not play this side season and went on to the 2021 NFL Draft.
With the start in one week, SEC groups will increase COVID control to 3 times per week; Players who test positive will need to pass the center’s assessments before they can play again. Participation in LSU games will have a limit of 25, consisting of pennies or 25,000 enthusiasts and, most importantly, no prostitutes.
On the day of our departure from the city, Orgeron let us into Tiger Stadium, as his father had predicted: no tickets are required.
Ed Orgeron: Welcome to Death Valley, where the dreams of war parties die. Opponents’ dreams are said to die in this field. As for the local coach’s dreams of betting school football like the same old ones here this fall, well, they can also be fragile.
Produced through Nathalie Sommer, Associate Producer, Kaylee Tully, Broadcast Associates, Annabelle Hanflig and Elizabeth Germino, edited by Peter M. Berman.