When a report from Bradley Locker at SB Nation’s Inside Northwestern blog emerged Wednesday that former LSU Tigers head football coach Ed Orgeron “would have interest” in the Northwestern job (following the firing of Pat Fitzgerald over hazing scandals), many on Twitter joked about if there had if there had been confusion between Northwestern and Northwestern State. Northwestern is a private school in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, with their Wildcats competing at the FBS level in the Big Ten, while Northwestern State is a public school in Natchitoches, Louisiana, with their Demons competing at the FCS level in the Southland Conference (but also one that wears purple, and also one that is Orgeron’s alma mater). Well, as per Sheldon Mickles of The Advocate, Orgeron was actually jogging on the Northwestern State campus when he learned of that report:
Now happily retired, former #LSU coach Ed Orgeron laughs off Northwestern U. report https://t.co/QDFDwnS7PK via @theadvocatebr @AdvocateSports
— Sheldon Mickles (@MicklesAdvocate) July 13, 2023
Here’s more from Mickels’ piece:
In town to attend the funeral Thursday of a close friend, Orgeron said he learned about the InsideNU.com report while jogging on the Northwestern State campus, his alma mater.
“I started getting all these messages,” he said with a laugh.
Quoting a source, the InsideNU.com story said Orgeron would be interested in replacing Fitzgerald if school officials made a run at the former LSU coach.
“Man, I don’t know where they get this stuff,” he said, again laughing off the report.
Orgeron also shot down the story earlier in the evening when reached by The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman.
That piece also has the 62-year-old Orgeron discussing how happy he is to be retired and spending time with his family, and saying “I’m done with that” about coaching. And the Orgeron to Northwestern story always seemed a little odd.
Yes, Orgeron is in the extremely small fraternity of coaches with a national title (his with LSU, for the historic 2019 season) who don’t currently have a prominent head coaching job. But even while at LSU, many tied his success there to his particularly strong Louisiana connections and the school’s status and recruiting power. And despite his incredible run in 2019, he went 5-5 and 6-6 in the ensuing seasons, and LSU announced he would only coach through the end of the season in October 2021. So Northwestern (a job with all manner of challenges despite its Big Ten status, and a total 4-20 record in Fitzgerald’s final two seasons) did not seem like a fit to many outside observers.
And that’s before any level of discussion around Orgeron and recent Title IX scandals at LSU. He was accused of overlooking some sexual harassment complaints, and was personally named as a defendant in one lawsuit at one point, but was eventually dropped from that. But anyone even mentioned in those kinds of conversations is likely not who a school looking for an image-rehabilitating coach is calling. So that added to the weirdness of a report bringing up a coach who didn’t coach at all last year, who had no seeming connections to the school, and who seemed quite happy to be and stay retired.
It is funny to hear that Orgeron heard about this report while jogging at Northwestern State, though. And it’s amusing to hear that he was only there thanks to particular circumstances leading him to Natchitoches (he has homes in Baton Rouge and Miami, and splits time between them). So those Northwestern/Northwestern State jokes had some merit.
