BATON ROUGE – You could hear him long before he walked in the Crowne Plaza Hotel ballroom just after lunchtime on Tuesday.
And then, there he was.
“How ya’ doin? Been lifting weights? You’re looking good.”
That sandpaper voice.
“Hey podnah, guess we’ll see you in the playoffs this season.”
The thick Cajun accent.
“Great to see you, man.”
Ed Orgeron, surrounded at the Louisiana High School Coaches’ Association’s annual clinic as he entered the room to lecture about LSU’s pass rush techniques, was back among his people doing what he does best.
Working the room with his infectious personality. Making everyone feel like they were his long-lost friend. Nobody was a stranger, as noted by Orgeron’s post-speech receiving line of at least 50 coaches who wanted a word with him or a selfie.
It took the former LSU head football coach – hired in December 2016, feted in 2019 as the national Coach of the Year after the 16-0 Tigers won the national championship and fired in 2021 – 10 minutes to navigate 140 feet from the ballroom door to the front of the room so he could start his animated demonstration.
Every few feet, there was a handshake. A hand on a shoulder. Always ending with a smile and a laugh.
Anybody with a shred of sanity or pride wonders why a man who was paid almost a $17 million buyout two years after arguably coaching the greatest team in college football history would want to return to the place that dumped him?
Because you can take the boy out of the bayou, but you can’t take the bayou out of the boy. Ed Orgeron loves football, LSU, his home state and its people.
And he respects new Tigers’ head coach Lane Kiffin enough to work for him a third time.
It was no surprise that former Ole Miss head coach Kiffin, who coached as an assistant with Orgeron on Southern Cal’s staff from 2001 to 2004, and then as head coach hired him at Tennessee in 2009 and again at Southern Cal from 2010 to 2013, created a position for him.
“It just took awhile to find the right role,” said Orgeron, who’s starting his third month as the Tigers’ special assistant to recruiting and defense.
The job is tailor-made for Orgeron, who turns 65 on Monday. Few human beings ever have been a better college football recruiter than him. And as a pupil of Pete Jenkins, the Obi Wan Kenobi of defensive line coaches for 6½ decades, Orgeron remains one of the finest defensive line technicians nationally.
His salary of $100,000 on an eight-month contract is tip money compared to his past LSU head coaching haul of $9 million annually. Surely, his new office is basically a broom closet compared to the expansive head coaching digs he enjoyed.
Unpretentious Coach O doesn’t care about the perception. He’s returned to his roots – recruiting teenagers, going to the practice field and getting in the trenches with them and developing them into young adults with viable futures.
One of them – former LSU linebacker Andre Anthony — was in the clinic audience. Signed by Orgeron in 2017, he fought through injuries in a five-year career good enough to get chosen by Tampa Bay in the seventh round of the 2022 NFL draft.
Though he never played in a regular season game that season – the Bucs quickly waived him, and he spent the year on the Chicago Bears practice squad — Anthony turned to coaching.
Last season in his first year as a high school head coach for Kenner-based Bonnabel, his squad overcame a 1-3 start to capture the program’s first winning season since 2012, first district championship since 1998, and first playoff win since 1997.
Anthony was clearly thrilled to see Orgeron again in LSU coaching paraphernalia.
“You can see his passion,” said Anthony after Orgeron’s enthusiastic 50-minute clinic. “It’s why I went to LSU. After he left, I thought he’d be back in coaching after five months. He loves it.”
Orgeron and his new wife Brandy spent most of his four seasons away from the game living on Miami Beach in a 37th-floor condo overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
It seemed like paradise.
Collecting buyout checks. Working out all day. Tanning at the beach. Drinks at beach bars. Visits to two of his sons who were analysts for Miami’s program, and to another son who’s a Tulane analyst.
Yes, maybe a June 2025 Louisiana Supreme Court ruling awarding Orgeron’s previous wife Kelly $8.13 million of his LSU buyout pushed his return to coaching.
But more than anything, he was bored. And in a predominantly Cuban population, he felt like he had docked his pirogue in Havana.
“My name could have been Raoul Ortega down there. . .they didn’t give a sh–,” he told the clinic crowd, which roared with laughter. “I’m not complaining. But after a while, the beach is the beach, right?
“And I really missed Louisiana.”
So, he and the new missus moved back into his University Club digs at the start of this year. It wasn’t long after social media pictures of Orgeron tutoring five-star LSU freshman defensive line signee Richard Anderson that Kiffin called with a job offer.
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Orgeron said.
Orgeron will tell you he wasn’t a great head coach. But he knew how to recruit. He understood how to motivate.
And when he pushed the right buttons – persuading future 2018 Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Joe Burrow to transfer to LSU from Ohio State in the summer of 2018 and adding playcalling whiz Joe Brady the next season – he understood his role on the Tigers’ ride to the national title.
“My job in 2019 was if the (team) bus left at 2:30, I got on the bus, and I looked for Joe (Burrow),” he said. “If Joe was on the bus, the bus would leave. If Joe wasn’t on the bus, the bus wasn’t leaving.
“When I got to the stadium, I said, `Hey Joe, throw the ball to Ja’Marr (Chase). If you ain’t, throw it to Justin (Jefferson). That’d be great, baby.’ ”
When Orgeron was Ole Miss’ head coach from 2005 to 2007, his biggest downfall was micromanaging. At LSU, the magic disappeared in 2020 and 2021 (when the Tigers were a combined 11-11 overall, 8-10) because he made a string of bad coordinator hires and trusted them too much.
Thanks to NIL and the transfer portal, the role of college football head coach has changed drastically while Orgeron was away from the game.
When LSU opens preseason camp in about two weeks, the Tigers will have 59 new players (43 transfer portal buys and 16 high school signees).
“It’s a new day and age,” Orgeron said. “How are we going to get all these (portal) guys together?
“Believe me, Coach Kiffin is an expert on it. He’s got this thing figured out. He’s built a phenomenal culture within six months he’s been here.
“Everything is ‘Yessir.’ Every day is `I’m gonna practice like a Tiger.’ Nobody misses a workout. Nobody’s late. Everybody works extra.”
Orgeron isn’t exactly clear on what his on-field duties will entail this fall. But he knows where he’ll be on Sept. 19 when Tigers play at Ole Miss following nine months of sniping between the schools and the fan bases after LSU’s money-whipped heist of Kiffin and his entire offensive staff.
“Getting off that bus at Ole Miss. . .wooo, that’s gonna be funnn bay-bee,” he said with a huge laugh.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com