A lot of football stories today, but who’s complaining, right?
As a flatland boy from Illinois, and an alum of DePaul University, the insanely overpriced, private shithole that doesn’t even have a football team, I don’t really have a dog in the college football fight. I wish I did, and I’ve even though about latching on to the University of Illinois, or perhaps another Big Ten school, none of that would even comes close to the culture of SEC football.
Enter LSU’s Coach Ed Orgeron, my absolute favorite person in all of college football.
Like I said, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I love me some Coach O. And as an outsider, it’s hard not to get excited watching LSU football. We previously shared his epic postgame “Roll Tide what? Fuck you” speech from earlier this season, but ESPN ran a piece this morning all about the different experiences various players and staff members had with Coach O. And my God, there is some GOLD in here.
One of my favorites? This little story from Kyle Fetterly, the head equipment manager at Syracuse:
Orgeron was always the first guy in, full of energy, and he’d work out on the field just before practice — sit-ups, push-ups, chin-ups, squat thrusts. One day, one of Fetterly’s assistants stopped him.
“Coach, you’re in good shape. Why do you do all this?” he asked.
Orgeron looked stunned. To take a day off would mean falling behind, and that’s not something Orgeron would ever do.
“Son,” he said, “the day I can’t whoop a man’s ass is the day I don’t get out of bed.”
A legend.
An absolute fucking legend.
