On Saturday, LSU’s Jordan Jefferson made the inexplicable decision to spike the football with only one second remaining in the game. Spiking the football ended the game and negated two miraculous Milacles: first, Les Miles’ Tigers recovered an onside kick and then they completed a 46-yard Hail Mary. In his postgame news conference Miles claimed that he didn’t know who had instructed Jefferson to spike the football. “I do not know who told him to clock [spike] it,” Miles said.
Except, you guessed it, Miles himself was displaying his uncanny acumen by calling for the ball to be spiked with one second remaining on the clock. That’s something that you can clearly see on this video after the jump. And yet another reason why LSU fans are still staring morosely at the waters on the bayou, shaking their heads, drinking Jax beers, and cursing the day that Les Miles didn’t leave for Michigan.
Earlier this season we put together a list of Les Miles’ ten most improbable success stories. We branded these Milacles. In his first three years at LSU, Miles went 34-6, won a national championship, racked up an impressive 19-5 regular season record in the SEC, and won games in such an improbable fashion that you came to believe that the laws of football physics didn’t apply to him. After he won a national championship despite two losses to inferior teams, I wrote a column calling him the biggest idiot to ever win a national title in college football.
Some LSU fans took offense to the characterization. I stood by my opinion. I love Les Miles, I hope he coaches at LSU for two more decades. If only so I can get texts like this soon after I sit down at the Tennessee-Vandy game. “Les Miles, you won’t believe it!”
Believe what?
There is almost nothing Miles could do on a football field that would surprise me. From coaching without pants — Miles: “I believed that my knees needed a brisk air to further legitimize our offensive prowess” — to Miles going for two when an extra point would win the game. The totality of the football universe is truly at play when the Mad Hatter hits the sideline.
Slowly, though, word spread around Neyland Stadium from one fan to another about the end of the Ole Miss-LSU game. Everyone began shaking their head in tandem. “LSU spiked the football with one second left,” a portly man behind me told his seatmate.
“That’s Les Miles,” the other man retorted.
Indeed, Miles has been a wild card on the sideline since he famously attempted to call timeout after LSU intercepted Tennessee in the fourth quarter of his first game as Tiger coach. Sadly, for Miles, the clock stops on the change of possession. Fortunately for him, no one saw him in that game attempting to call a timeout. Unfortunately for him, no one on the LSU sideline saw fit to call timeout with the clock running and fourth down looming against Ole Miss.
Last season the bloom appeared to be off Miles’ fleur-de-lis. He and the Tigers lost as many SEC games in 2008 as they’d lost in his first three seasons combined. Cajun hearts collectively skipped a beat. But Miles, with typical self-confidence, brushed off doubters and asserted that 2009 would bring a return to …
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