Man, I love Coach O.
The personality, the fire, the passion for college football… there just isn’t anybody else like Ed Orgeron
Of course, Ed put a bow on his tenure with LSU this year, cashing a $17 million dollar check in the process. But before that, he was at USC.
From 1998 Coach O was hired as the defensive line coach at USC under head coach Pete Carroll, and was later named recruiting coordinator in 2001, and assistant head coach in 2003.
After stops at Ole Miss, the New Orleans Saints and Tennessee, Coach O came back to USC in 2010, where he was one of the highest-paid assistant coaches in college football under Lane Kiffin. In 2013, when USC hired Steve Sarkisian instead him to replace Kiffin (he was the interim head coach at the time), he resigned.
Of course, we all know about his time at LSU and the rest is history.
But with a few of his LSU Tigers in Los Angeles for the Super Bowl this weekend, Coach O sat down for an interview with Dan Patrick and they got to reminiscing about his time in LA.
And man, can Coach O tell a story.
When asked how he closed recruits at USC, Coach O said he would take them down to Santa Monica pier (one of the nicest spots in the area), and point to all the mansions and tell recruits that’s where different celebrities lived.
Except… he was completely full of shit:
“I would take a personal walk with each recruit down the pier, and I’d say ‘you know what, if you come to USC, you could be like… there’s Kobe Bryant’s house, this is this movie star’s house, this is that movie star’s house… no I don’t know who lived there, but it damn sounded good.”
But his biggest recruiting moves involved one of the best running backs of all time, Adrian Peterson.
“Man I loved him… we go down to see Adrian, and Adrian had a great relationship. He loved Pete Carroll, I felt like him and I were very tight.
I said, ‘well Adrian what is the key to getting you here at USC?’ He said, ‘well coach, my dad is incarcerated and Bob Stoops went to see him.’ Me and Pete Carrol tried to go see him and they wouldn’t let us in.
He said, ‘My dad is able to watch my games where he’s at if I go to Oklahoma.’
I tried to get the guy transferred to Los Angeles… I competed, couldn’t get it done, but I competed.”
Coach O and Pete Carroll literally tried to get his dad switched to a new prison so he could watch his games at USC. Granted, it didn’t work, but it brings a whole new meaning to “by any means necessary.”
Coach O will be taking the next year off, but this definitely isn’t the last of him.
