Miles, coaches visit Houma

LSU coach Les Miles is excited about having some competition at quarterback this year. He’d also like to see the Southeastern Conference adjust its scheduling rotation for schools that don’t want to be locked into permanent cross-division opponents, and he believes the issue of unionization in college sports is something that deserves careful study by the NCAA and all those involved.

Those were just a few subjects Miles touched on as he prepared to speak to a private audience of LSU boosters and alumni at a recent 2014 Tiger Tour visit through Houma.

Speaking to reporters before the event, held at the Houma-Terrebonne Civic Center last Thursday, Miles said there was never any shortage of excitement about the upcoming season, even if the off-season is only halfway over and opening kickoff is still months away.

“Great teams, they’re in a position right now where they’re taking a quarterback and making him better, or they’re working on a defensive spot that they’ve got to make better,” Miles said. “Special teams will always have an issue. It’s just the way it is. We’re looking forward to it. We think we’ve got a heck of a team and a heck of a chance. I look forward to some of this freshman class coming in as well.”

The quarterback battle in particular will be one to watch, Miles said, as sophomore Anthony Jennings looks to take over the role permanently after leading LSU to a come-from-behind win over Arkansas late last season, and a 21-14 victory over Iowa in the Outback Bowl.

Competing against Jennings is Brandon Harris, a freshman from Parkway High School in Bossier City who accounted for four touchdowns – three passing, one rushing – in the Tigers’ spring game last month.

“I think it’s going to be a heck of a (battle),” Miles said. “We have two talented guys, some strengths and weaknesses on both sides, and the youth of Brandon Harris versus the more experienced but still young Anthony Jennings. It’s going to be a competition that will decide the starter.”

SCHEDULING STILL A SORE SPOT FOR LSU

It may seem hard to believe, but Miles will be entering his 10th season as LSU coach this fall. Every year, his teams have faced Florida from the SEC East as a permanent cross-divisional opponent.

The SEC had been considering a change in its scheduling format that would have eliminated permanent cross-division opponents and switched from an eight-game conference schedule to a nine-game slate. But in a surprise move late last month, the conference ultimately balked at those plans and announced the league would stay at an eight-game schedule.

That means traditional match-ups such as Alabama vs. Tennessee and Auburn vs. Georgia, two of the longest-running rivalries in college football, will be preserved. It also means that LSU will continue playing Florida each year (the Tigers and Gators have faced each other annually since 1971).

Miles and LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva have been two of the current format’s most vocal opponents and believe that permanent cross-division match-up’s each year create an unfair advantage for some schools. They say schools get locked into an opponent that is decidedly weak or strong over an extended period of time.

During the Houma stop on this year’s Tiger Tour, Miles said he didn’t want to be painted as someone who wants to eliminate traditional conference rivalries.

Rather, Miles wants to adapt a model similar to the PAC 12. “The teams that want the rivalry, play the rivalry. The teams that don’t, rotate through it,” he said. The PAC 12 features a nine-game conference schedule.

“The idea that there are teams in our conference that must play long-term rivalries, I’m for that. I really am,” said Miles. “If they want to do that, they need to do that. But the reality of it is, there’s a way to adjust the rotation such that they can still be rotated in and rotated out.”

UNIONIZATION IN COLLEGE SPORTS

The subject of unionization in college sports has been a hot topic for the past several weeks in light of recent events at Northwestern University, where the school’s football players voted in secret late last month on whether to form the country’s first union for college athletes.

The vote came after a late March ruling from the Chicago region of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which stated that Northwestern players qualify as employees of the school and have the right to unionize.

Any significant impact stemming from those events could be months if not years away. In the meantime, Miles said he’s never been of the opinion that any of the players he’s coached were employees but that he believes the issue of unionization deserves careful thought and full discussion.

“I see (players) as students and student-athletes,” Miles said. “They go get their degree and it’s an opportunity for a degree and full grant and aid for a chance to play at the very highest level. But I’m sure that the NCAA will do the right thing and that the review of this issue is going to be sound and solid.”

‘STATE OF THE TIGERS’

Joining Miles at Thursday’s Tiger Tour stop were LSU men’s basketball coach Johnny Jones, gymnastics coach D-D Breaux, and Senior Associate Athletic Director Verge Ausberry, who said that LSU athletics were in good shape all across the board.

“We are in the black, we’re winning, and we’re building new projects,” Ausberry said.

Those projects include a $100 million plan to expand the south end-zone at Tiger Stadium, a new tennis facility that is set to open in 2015, plus a new practice facility for gymnastics and upgrades to baseball and softball offices.

More plans – a nutrition center for the football program, for instance – are also in the works as Ausbery acknowledged that the arms race across college sports continues to grow every year.

“With Oregon, Alabama and others all doing different things, you’re always playing catch-up,” Ausberry said. “It’s always an arms race and at LSU, we’re going to try to be the best program there is.”

The university is also doing its best to work with fans and gauge their feedback.

One thing the school has been looking to do for some time now is attempt to address parking and traffic problems on football game days, Ausberry said. According to a recent survey, those two issues were voted the number one concerns most fans had.

“Think about it: the roads haven’t changed at LSU since there was 60,000 people sitting in the stadium,” Ausberry said. “Now you have over (90,000) in the stadium and the roads are still the same. So we’re doing a study right now that should be coming out soon on how we can get people in and out of Tiger Stadium better.”

BASKETBALL, GYMNASTICS ON THE RISE

Both the men’s basketball and gymnastics programs at LSU are coming off strong seasons, and the Tiger Tour event gave both programs’ coaches a chance to highlight their recent successes.

This past season, LSU’s basketball team earned a postseason berth in the NIT in coach Johnny Jones’ second season.

The Tigers won 20 games and boasted an impressive 13-3 mark at home.

The team’s victory in the first round of the NIT marked the Tigers’ first postseason win in several seasons, dating back to the beginning of the Trent Johnson era.

Going forward, the program will lose key players in Johnny O’Bryant III, Andre Stringer and Thibodaux native Shavon Coleman, but Jones said things are going according to plan as he prepares to enter his third season as LSU coach.

“The first year, we came in trying to stabilize the program and wound up winning 19 games,” Jones said. “This past year, not only winning 20 games and having two winning seasons back to back, but getting into postseason play and winning a basketball game in the NIT, I think we’re certainly heading in the right direction and are excited with the people we’ve had in the program.”

LSU’s gymnastics team, meanwhile, completed arguably its most successful season in program history under coach D-D Breaux with a third-place finish in the NCAA Super Six Finals back on April 19, the highest finish in school history.

What Breaux hopes now is that LSU can develop into a consistent threat at the national level, as other SEC programs like Alabama and Florida have done.

Those schools invested heavily in their gymnastics programs with facility upgrades years ago, Breaux said, and now LSU is doing the same, which has allowed the Tigers to make the next step nationally.

“All of those teams, 14 or 15 years ago, made commitments to build new facilities and have enjoyed that kind of safe and functional training environment for years,” Breaux said. “LSU has recently — in the last eight years — made a real commitment to our staff and to financing the program like it needed to be financed. We spent 14 years just fighting to exist and to survive.

“Now we’ve got a great staff, we’ve got some momentum, all of us are a very cohesive coaching staff, and that’s critical to achieving what schools like Alabama and Florida have been able to do.”

Les Miles