As buyout lives go, Ed Orgeron is probably living the best one imaginable. On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, he swings his phone toward his balcony on the 37th floor of a South Beach high-rise to show off a breathtaking view that might get even more breathtaking depending on which neighbors are home at a given moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say J Lo lives right over there,\u201d he says, pointing across the street.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Coach O\u2019s lease is up in December, and he intends to leave that view behind. He plans to be back in college football by then. The man who led LSU to the 2019 national title and then got a $17 million buyout when he was fired less than two years later wants to get back on the grass.<\/p>\n
But unlike other former head coaches trying to return, Orgeron doesn\u2019t insist on having the biggest office. He intends to be picky about his next destination, but he\u2019s not limiting his search only to schools looking for a head coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want a fit. I\u2019m not going to take just anything, and not everybody\u2019s going to take me,\u201d Orgeron says. \u201cIt may be a head coach job. It may be a defensive line job with someone that I believe can win a championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
That may feel like a record-scratch moment, but not to anyone who knows Orgeron. He did this after his first foray as a head coach (at Ole Miss from 2005-07) ended badly. And he\u2019d do it again, even though he\u2019s done something only three active college head coaches (Clemson\u2019s Dabo Swinney, Georgia\u2019s Kirby Smart and Ohio State\u2019s Ryan Day) have done.<\/p>\n
Orgeron\u2019s happy place is on the field teaching rip and swim moves, followed closely by in the living room \u2014 or mom\u2019s kitchen \u2014 closing an elite recruit. He\u2019s learned how much he misses it these past few years. His sons Cody and Parker are on Mario Cristobal\u2019s staff at Miami, and the elder Orgeron is a regular at the Hurricanes\u2019 facility. He\u2019s visited Notre Dame and he\u2019s visited his friend Mickey Joseph\u2019s Grambling team. Every time he touched a practice field, he felt the pull. Yes, he\u2019d love to be a head coach again. But if he\u2019s the defensive line coach\/ace recruiter for a team that can make the College Football Playoff, he\u2019ll feel right at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing the d-line coach at Miami, being the d-line coach at LSU and USC, I loved it,\u201d Orgeron says.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to understand why. He was Jimmy Johnson and Craig Erickson\u2019s defensive line coach at Miami. He was Pete Carroll\u2019s defensive line coach at USC. Being LSU\u2019s defensive line coach under Les Miles opened the door to Orgeron becoming LSU\u2019s head coach and assembling one of the greatest teams that ever played. All those tenures, as Orgeron mentioned, included national titles, and that\u2019s no accident.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I interview, I want them to want me as much as I want them,\u201d Orgeron says. \u201cI\u2019m a championship coach, and I\u2019m going to bring a winning program to their university.\u201d<\/p>\n
Or he could enhance a program that\u2019s already winning. Let\u2019s say 73-year-old Ohio State defensive line coach Larry Johnson decided to retire this winter after an illustrious career. It would be unfair, but the Buckeyes could replace one all-timer with another. Perhaps the new coach at Penn State or Florida wants to infuse the program with talent while also having a sounding board who understands how to win a national title. Orgeron could play those roles.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always thought Orgeron\u2019s business model going forward should be this: He waits it out in South Beach every offseason. Then, when a team fires its coach in September or early October, they call Orgeron to finish the season as the interim head coach. He brings his \u201cOne heartbeat\u201d drum and finds a way to make the players love football again. The team wins some games it shouldn\u2019t have \u2014 just as Orgeron\u2019s USC and LSU teams did when he was the interim \u2014 and Oregon collects several million dollars and waits for another AD to call him in from the bullpen next season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Orgeron is the greatest interim coach in college football history. Why not make it a second career?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m for it, man,\u201d Orgeron says. \u201cTalk to my agent, Derek.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orgeron\u2019s agent, Derek Ponamsky, is not as enthusiastic about that plan. That\u2019s probably because Ponamsky, who served as Orgeron\u2019s right hand at LSU, believes Coach O has a lot more wins in him at a single place that chooses to believe in him.<\/p>\n
The end at LSU was rough, but Orgeron went 51-20 in six seasons. Maybe you believe he caught lightning in a bottle in 2019, but most coaches can\u2019t catch that kind of lightning, and if they could, they don\u2019t know how to open the bottle. Orgeron has and can provide that capability as a consigliere to a head coach who wants to win his first national title.<\/p>\n
Coach O has the buyout life the rest of us dream of. He wants to be back on the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love ball,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
And he believes he\u2019s got plenty of years left to coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m young, man,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m 64 years young.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As buyout lives go, Ed Orgeron is probably living the best one imaginable. On a sunny Tuesday afternoon,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[133795,399,398,396,397,4504,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-243991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-ed-orgeron","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-ncaafootball","13":"tag-regwall","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}