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Saturday, January 11, 2020
East Oregonian
B3
LSU coach Orgeron’s success fueling Cajun pride on the bayou
By BRETT MARTEL
Associated Press
LAROSE, La. — A card-
board likeness of Ed Org-
eron, wearing a purple polo
with gold LSU lettering,
stands in an entertainment
parlor at the home of one of
his childhood friends.
The life-size cutout was
displayed a couple years
ago at a celebration dubbed
“Coach O Day” in the pre-
dominantly Cajun south
Louisiana
community
where Orgeron grew up, a
place where everyone seems
to have a nickname and
shares stories in the same
Cajun
French-infl uenced
accent synonymous with the
raspy-voiced coach.
Don “Noochie” Adams
now has the keepsake in his
house, which is surrounded
by towering cypress trees
and sprawling live oaks just
down the street from Bayou
Lafourche — a slow mov-
ing waterway where the dis-
tinctive outriggers of shrimp
boats rise above the banks.
This is home, where Org-
eron’s long, circuitous foot-
ball life began.
“Bebe loves the commu-
nity,” said Adams, refer-
ring to Orgeron by his child-
hood nickname, pronounced
BAY-BAY. “He never forgot
about the bayou. It oozes out
of him.
“He never changed.
That’s how you know it’s
Bebe.”
Cajun pride is swelling in
Lafourche Parish now that
the former two-way line-
man at South Lafourche
High School, who won a
1977 state title with the Tar-
pons, is on the brink of cap-
ping off arguably the LSU
Tigers’ greatest season in
the program’s 126-year his-
tory with a national title.
No. 1 LSU plays third-
ranked Clemson on Mon-
day night in the College
Football Playoff champion-
ship in New Orleans, about
60 miles northeast of where
Orgeron grew up.
LSU has won three
national
championships
AP Photo/C.B. Schmelter, File
LSU coach Ed Orgeron celebrates on stage after the team’s win over Georgia on Dec. 7, 2019, for the Southeastern Conference
championship, in Atlanta.
before, but the Tigers have
never gone 15-0.
Orgeron, 58, is only the
third Louisiana native to
coach LSU since the Tigers
joined the Southeastern
Conference in 1933. The
coaches of LSU’s national
title teams all came from out
of state: Paul Dietzel (Ohio)
in 1958, Nick Saban (West
Virginia) in 2003 and Les
Miles (Ohio) in 2007.
Not that the people of
Lafourche Parish need any
football history lessons.
The quarterback of Org-
eron’s state title team was
Bobby Hebert, who also
became the fi rst quarter-
back to lead the New Orle-
ans Saints to the NFL play-
offs. Although the area has
a small-town feel, the high
school stadium, comprised
of two large concrete pavil-
ions on each sideline, holds
about 6,600 spectators. Traf-
fi c on football Friday nights
can get backed up for miles
on the two-lane roads along
each bank of the bayou.
Like virtually every-
one in his community, Org-
eron was a big LSU fan
growing up and accepted a
scholarship to play for the
Tigers, but struggled with
his adjustment to college
life away from home and
dropped out. Later, he fi n-
ishing his playing career at
Northwestern State.
“I watched LSU foot-
ball since I can remember,”
Orgeron said after practice
this week. “I knew one day
I’d get a chance to represent
LSU and just representing
all the guys that played in
the purple and gold. This is
what we live for.”
Lane Fillinich, a for-
mer high school teammate
Washington hires John Donovan
as new offensive coordinator
Associated Press
SEATTLE — New Wash-
ington coach Jimmy Lake
made his fi rst major coach-
ing hire Friday, adding John
Donovan as the Huskies’ new
offensive coordinator.
It’s not as splashy a hire as
some Washington fans were
hoping for after Bush Ham-
dan was fi red. Donovan has
fi ve years of experience as a
college offensive coordina-
tor — three at Vanderbilt and
two at Penn State — but he
spent the past four seasons
working on the offensive staff
of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Donovan will also be
Washington’s quarterbacks
coach.
“Coach Donovan has a
great deal of experience at
both the college and NFL
levels, learning from a lot
of great offensive minds
about coach-
ing the kind
of aggres-
sive,
pro-
style offense
we want to
play here at
Donovan
Wa s h i n g -
ton,” Lake
said in a statement. “From my
own experience, I know how
much a coach can learn and
grow by spending signifi cant
time in the NFL. I’m excited
for him to get to Seattle and
get started.”
Donovan will make
$850,000 for the upcom-
ing season, according to
a memorandum of under-
standing from the school.
His salary will get a bump
to $875,000 for the 2021
and 2022 seasons. There are
also additional incentives
for team success and aca-
demic achievement.
Donovan was a defensive
back in college but switched
to coaching on the offensive
side of the ball in the mid-
2000s while an assistant at
Maryland.
He became an offensive
coordinator at Vanderbilt
under James Franklin in 2011
and followed Franklin when
he went to Penn State in 2014.
Donovan was fi red after the
2015 season.
During his four years with
the Jaguars, Donovan spent
two seasons working with
quarterbacks, one coaching
tight ends and one coaching
running backs.
Donovan has not coached
on the West Coast and his hir-
ing may seem underwhelm-
ing to fans after rumblings
that the Huskies were try-
ing to lure Dallas Cowboys
offensive coordinator Kellen
Moore back to his home state.
of Orgeron, said the vibe
in Lafourche Parish created
by the LSU coach’s recent
success is like “going to the
Holy Land and just that feel-
ing when you’re there that
comes on you.”
“You grew up as an LSU
fan, but we’ve got a horse in
the race now,” Fillinich said.
“We’ve got the key to the
city now, the Cajuns.”
The sentiment is wide-
spread in Orgeron’s old
stomping grounds. On the
front lawn of a one-story
brick home a few miles
up the bayou from where
Adams lives is a purple
and gold eye-of-the-tiger
emblem resembling the one
emblazoned on the 50-yard
line at LSU’s Tiger Stadium.
The home belongs to
Cornelia “Coco” Orgeron,
Ed Orgeron’s 77-year-old
mother. She said an artis-
tically inclined neighbor
painted it on her lawn and
a few others in the area.
Motorists often tap their
horns in approval as they
pass by.
“I go to the store and
everybody says, ‘Our boy
did good,’” Coco Orgeron
said. “Let’s put it this way,
he has a lot more cousins
than he ever had.”
Coco Orgeron still speaks
French to her older friends
and laments how Cajuns
felt pressure to assimilate
during war times in the fi rst
half of the 20th century, and
often felt unfairly looked
down upon as unsophisti-
cated people who knew little
of life outside the swamps
and marshes. Cajuns, she
said, should be known as
resourceful, hard-working
people with generous hearts.
Historically, the local
economy revolved around
trapping for pelts, sugar
cane or the seafood industry.
Shrimp, crabs, crawfi sh and
oysters are favorites found
at restaurants with names
like Cher Amie’s (Dear
Friend’s). More recently, the
off-shore oil industry has
been an economic driver,
albeit in boom-and-bust
cycles related to oil prices,
and it has struggled recently.
“We were ridiculed all
our lives,” Coco Orgeron
said while trying to explain
why her community is
so overjoyed by her son’s
success.
Coco said people she
meets
while
running
errands or attending church
even compliment the vari-
ous shirts they see her son
wearing on the sideline from
week to week.
“Just little things like that
they observe, they’ll tell me
everything that they see,”
she said. “I love it.”
Ed Orgeron wasn’t nec-
essarily LSU’s top choice to
replace Les Miles, who was
fi red during the 2016 season.
Although Orgeron had been
successful in interim stints
at USC and LSU, he went
10-25 in his only other head
coaching job at Mississippi
from 2005-07.
When Orgeron insisted
he’d learned from past mis-
takes and was ready to
return LSU to national
prominence, no one believed
him more than people he’d
grown up with, like Tommy
Gisclair.
But Gislair said what
Orgeron has done goes
beyond football, saying the
coach projects a positive
aura that, for example, has
made Cajuns less self-con-
scious, if not more proud,
of the distinctive way they
talk.
“He’s turned it into a pos-
itive and people gravitate to
him and they love it,” Gis-
clair said. “They love to hear
him.”
Chances are, football
fans will be hearing a lot
more from him for seasons
to come.
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