The LSU Tigers have been one of the better teams in college football and they are about to reportedly get into a potentially ugly legal battle with one of their top coaches of all time. Adam Rittenberg of ESPN is reporting that former coach Les Miles has filed a lawsuit against the LSU Tigers and is alleging that the school’s decision to vacate wins is causing him a chance to be selected into the College Football Hall of Fame.
LSU made the decision to vacate 37 wins from 2012-15 and, as a result, eliminated Les Miles from College Football Hall of Fame consideration. The reason he would be ineligible for the Hall of Fame is their cutoff point is a .600 winning percentage, which would not be reached with the vacating of the wins.
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With the vacated wins, Miles’ record is 108-73 or a .597 winning percentage. The Tigers vacated these wins after it was uncovered that there was a Level I recruiting violation during his tenure as coach. The NCAA’s release says the violation dates back to 2012 where a representative of LSU’s athletic interests paid the father of a potential athlete more than $180,000 over five-years. The representative has since been disassociated from the program for 10 years.
In that lawsuit, Les Miles has listed both the NCAA and the National Football Foundation as defendants. Miles’ long-time agent George Bass said that LSU promised they were going to undo this injustice and instead went back on their word.
At this time, Louisiana State University has not publicly commented on the pending lawsuit. It will be interesting to see how things wind up and what the outcome of this lawsuit is.
Should Les Miles be in the College Football Hall of Fame?
Les Miles had an interesting college football coaching career as he was the 2011 AP Coach of the Year and won the 2007 national championship. He spent 18 years coaching college football at Oklahoma State, LSU and Kansas before retiring after an 0-9 season in 2020 with the Kansas Jayhawks.
However, during his heyday with the LSU Tigers, it was difficult to find someone more dominant as a coach than Miles. In his 12 years with the LSU Tigers, he went 114-34 (.770 winning percentage) and was 8-4 in bowl games. Les Miles went 1-1 in the national championship games as well but was just head and shoulders above most coaches in his era that if he is eligible and gets enough wins unvacated to qualify, he should be in the College Football Hall of Fame.
It is important to note that any of the three teams that he coached are believed to have nominated him to be voted on and that he became eligible in Nov. 23 after turning 70 years old.
About the Author
Vincent Pensabene graduated from Saint Leo University in 2019 with a B.A. in Sport Business and has focused on the media side of sports. He writes for multiple publications and is interested in the reasoning of why things happen. Feel free to follow him on social media @TalkVinTalk and discuss all things sports.