LSU needs to back its next football coach
Archer didn't have a friend in the world
This week's column was supposed to be about something else.
Then Mike Archer quit at LSU and started me thinking and remembering.
Stan Torgerson
Cats' Pause Columnist
While I don't live in Louisiana, I'm in the state two or three days every two weeks.
The inevitability of Archer's demise has been obvious for some time.
Privately, people were against him. Publicly, people were against him. The talk shows, the letters to the editor, all reflected a common belief that tomorrow would be better than today for LSU football if only the Tigers had a new coach.
The press didn't help Archer's cause either. Newspaper people second-guessed him in column after column. TV and radio people jumped on the same bandwagon.
Let me tell you something about the broadcast fraternity. I speak with 40 years experience behind the microphone. Sports announcers are convinced if they don't say something sensational they'll lose thier audiences, and their ratings, to someone else who does. Ratings are the lifeblood of the business.
As a result, the sports anchors who are reliable, thoughtful and solidly analytical can be counted on the fingers of one hand. For every one whose program represents accurate sports reporting, there are five whose program only reflects show biz.
Anyway, they joined the mob with their sly inuendos and Mike Archer was deader that Kelsey's reproductive organs.
As LSU people are about to find out, fixing a sick football program is not as easy as changing doctors.
I went through it at Ole Miss in 1973. Billy Kinard, after coaching the Rebels to 9-2 in 1971 and 5-5 in 1972, made the mistake of losing two of his first three games in 1973.
Someone slipped up on Kinard's blind side, convinced a not too resolute chancellor Porter Fortune that disaster was on the immediate horizon unless Billy was fired, then and there, only three games into the season, and Rebel football went to hell in a handbasket. Billy Brewer finally began to put the pieces back together, some 15 or 16 years later.
The "fresh start" crowd was so powerful they even fired me after the season and I was only the radio announcer. I eventually got the job back four years later, but those were very troubled times.
The thing Rebel fans learned and, I believe, LSU fans are about to learn, is there are no miracle men coaching college football today. There are only hard workers, smart hard workers, I admit, but hard workers.
Smart as they may be and hard as they may work, they cannot do the job alone.
They need the help and support of every fan their university has. The name of the game in building a winning college program is not coaching. It's recruiting.
Successful recruiting means having comparable facilities to those schools recruiting against you and that takes money. LSU has a problem there. Tiger Stadium is a great place to play but go underneath it and examine the Tigers' weight room and other areas of that very old structure. Then go to some of the other SEC schools who have upgraded. No comparison.
Successful recruiting also means finding alumni who will provide players good summertime jobs. Not minimum wage jobs but jobs in which a kid can legally
Columnist's opinion of the way Mike Archer (right) was treated by LSU athletics director Joe Dean:
I am dismayed by the way athletics director Joe Dean has handled the LSU situation so far. Joe has always been one of my shining examples but his admission that he hired a national executive research firm six weeks ago to produce a list of coaching candidates while publicly proclaiming his support of, and belief in, Mike Archer, smacks of hypocrisy of the highest order.
make enough money tha
can put some away tor his
personal needs during the school year.
Successful recruiting means putting together and supporting the program so outstanding athletes around the state hear people talking up your athletic program instead of tearing it down.
Successful recruiting also requires media support, honest reporting rather than cynical sensationalism.
Ole Miss didn't get that. Instead they had the John Vaught faction that wanted assistant coach Bob Tyler promoted to the head job and the athletic director Bruiser Kinard faction that wanted brother Billy.
Bruiser won, but he lost. When Billy was fired so was Bruiser.
I am dismayed by the way athletics director Joe Dean has handled the LSU situation so fer. Joe has always been one of my shining examples but his admission that he hired a national executive research firm six weeks ago to produce a list of coaching candidates while publicly proclaiming his support of, and belief in, Mike Archer, smacks of hypocrisy of the highest order.
When Billy Kinard got the Ole Miss job it was alumni meeting season. I went with him to one. He was the speaker, I was the master of ceremonies.
Kinard was always blunt, tactless and honest. He knew football, really knew football. He didn't know how to handle people.
I introduced Billy and he stood up to speak, fully aware of the controversy over his hiring.
The new coach looked the crowd of 400 right in their collective eye and then said, "I understand there has been a lot of talk about whether or not I should have gotten the Ole Miss job. Well, here's the way it is. From this point on you're either with me or against me."
In other words, choose up sides. Right now. Be with me or get lost.
I hope the situation at LSU never comes to "you're either with us or against us."
The only way LSU will ever rise again to its greatest glory is for the state to be  with the school, its new coach and the athletic program.
If they don't then save this column and we'll run it again in four years. Only the names will be different.
NOT FOR BROADCAST
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THE LAST WORD
Tee shirt reported by writer Jimmy Hyams at the Florida State-LSU game: "The SEC can kiss m\ ACC"