There’s a famous idiom about the nature of opinions that circulates whenever someone throws rational thought to the wind and speaks atop the fickle soapbox of emotion.
Minus a crass word here and there, the point of the colloquial I mentioned is to convey the message that everyone has an opinion and they all stink.
Last week, Miles Jordan, an opinion writer for The Daily Reveille, gave his take on why it’s already time for the Tigers to part ways with LSU coaches Ed Orgeron and Matt Canada.
While Jordan is completely entitled to his opinion, I think it’s an important article to address in order to maintain the credibility of the sports staff while also pointing out the egregious flaws in his piece.
For starters, Jordan does not work for the sports section, his views do not represent those of the sports staff and he is certainly not the sports columnist. That position is occupied by yours truly.
Secondly, and as a few Facebook commenters pointed out, the basis of Jordan’s piece was built on a foundation of misleading statistics.
In his article, Jordan makes a false comparison between LSU’s offensive rank at the end of last year and LSU’s offensive rank presumably after the Troy game.
This is not a fair comparison due to the simple fact that it predicates one looking at LSU’s offenses at different points in their respective seasons.
However, if we compare the 2016 and 2017 Tiger offenses at equivalent moments in time — we’ll use the measurement of five games in order to be fair to Jordan — something interesting happens.
After five games into the 2016 season, LSU’s offense averaged 25.2 points per game, 398.4 yards of total offense, 1.2 turnovers a game and had a third-down efficiency rating of 42.6 percent.
Match that with a Tiger offense that averaged 27 points per game, 409 yards of total offense, one turnover a game and had a third-down efficiency rating of 35.1 percent, and maybe you’ll see that these offenses are not that far apart.
Granted, an athletic program hires a new coach with the expectation that the team makes noticeable improvements, but LSU has certainly not regressed at the helm of Orgeron the way Jordan implied in his article.
It’s true that LSU’s performances this season against Mississippi State and Troy were horrendous and left much to be desired, but to disregard the improvements made against Florida, Auburn and Ole Miss is sure to lead one to fallacious conclusions.
If any division one athletic department hit the panic button as fast as spectators like Jordan would like them to, the stability of blue-chip programs would suffer and the overall product of prime-time college football would be truly disappointing.
Don’t believe me?
I’m old enough to remember a 2007 Alabama football team that had just hired a brand new football coach by the name of Nick Saban.
That football team finished with a record of 7-6 and went on a four game skid that included losses to rivals LSU, Mississippi State and Auburn along with an embarrassing defeat to Louisiana-Monroe.
By Jordan’s logic, Saban should have been fired that year and Alabama football’s dynasty would have never come to fruition.
I certainly have my fair share of critiques of Orgeron and Canada, but it would behoove everyone associated with LSU athletics to give this coaching staff a fair shake before jumping to rash conclusions.