Let’s not think about “winning the press conference”. Let’s just hire a guy who can do the job.

rumors of a genuine rift between Crowton and Mile

What does this mean?

At the beginning of the year the sexy thing to post on message boards was “Miles is handcuffing Crowton”. When I’d ask those guys for details I’d get vague answeres like, “Well, I know what a Crowton offense looks like, and LSU isn’t running it”.

I interpreted those types of responses as, “I’m pissed off at the team, and I’m blaming Miles rather than Crowton”. And I’ll be honest I had a genuine man crush on Crowton after the 2007 season. I loved his multiple looks, and I thought his play calling was excellent. So I had a hard time siding with Miles on this at first…

But a funny thing happened in 2008 for me. As the season wore on, I was less and less upset with the Jarrett Lee Frick-up-a-thon, and more and more upset with Gary Crowton’s play calling. I didn’t think he was tailoring his play calling to his QB’s strengths and weaknesses.

Now in 2009, we hear Miles say things like “we had a want to get Shep more touches”. Or “We had a want to throw the ball down field more” etc. We know those things aren’t happening with much consistency. We also know that when we throw down the field and get Shep more touches our offense performs. So who is to blame?

My opinion is the exact opposite of the common message board banter that Miles is handcuffing Crowton. My opinion is that Crowton is screwing this thing up by himself, and that Miles’ suggestions are being ignored by Crowton. I don’t think Miles is involved enough in the offense.

excellent post Jonno and i feel the same way. a guy that i tailgated with kept saying it was crowton’s fault and i was like you thinking “someone doesn’t just forget how to coach”.

but these two past years have been abysmal and i went from “miles is handcuffing crowton” to “the crowton two year theory applies here too”.

as someone else used to say…“it’s time to move on…”

is that if he is successful be will leave for a head coaching job. All in all though, I think it can be a great thing to get a unheard of guy if he can do the job.

But I’ll wait till a later date to say something…things are still too speculative right now.

I agree LSU doesn’t need to hire a big name. But I don’t see why we wouldn’t want one. All other things being equal, I would rather get someone who has shown that he can be successful on a big stage than hiring an unknown. All new hires are crapshoots to some degree, but someone with a resume gives you a bit more confidence that they know what they’re doing. It also helps recruiting to have a guy who can talk about the successes he has had. Supposedly Chavis was a big influence in getting Sam Montgomery last year and we heard about Janzen Jackson wanting to play for Monte at Tennessee.

LSU’s a big enough program that we shouldn’t need to promote some unknown to a high visibility program. In McElwain’s case, I don’t think that really qualifies as an unknown. He may not have been the biggest name out there, but previous experience as an OC at a consistently winning mid-major is good prep for a BCS OC role.
Promoting a position coach to OC, which all of a sudden requires a different set of preparation and game time skills is more of a stretch to me. In Monken’s case specifically though, I would much rather see him than Kragthorpe. Kragthorpe had a lot of success at Tulsa, but his offenses really stunk it up at Louisville.

IF there’s a move:
—think about people with connections to either Miles, other members of the staff, LSU or the region/conference.

—think about people who typically run an offense similar to what LSU does now. Don’t expect this team to turn into a Rich Rodriguez spread-n-shred running game, or a Texas Tech air-raid attack either.

—think realistically —> most NFL coordinators or vested assistants are in the NFL for a reason. The money is comparable with different hours (you don’t have to spend several hours a day/week recruiting), AND, NFL coaches have a pension and benefits (though they are getting reduced). I know some people would love to see Curtis Johnson at LSU, and that’d be great, but you just don’t see coaches who have been in the NFL (and are doing the awesome job he’s doing with the Saints) making moves like that except for special circumstances.

—think about people with track records. People jump on the coordinator of the hot offense of the minute, and that’s great, but everybody has highs and lows and comes down to earth. Miles is a guy who values consistency, so he’s going to look for somebody who’s proven that when you give him the players, he’ll pile up the points.

This may not apply to the RB coach position, which is already open, but IF there are any other changes, don’t expect any real movement till after the bowl game. Just how these things are done.

Steve Logan. OC at BC before leaving for the NFL (Tampa, so he might want to leave)

Was a head coach at East Carolina, and developed Matt Ryan.