Les Miles rumors: Les is more for LSU football

Let’s put down the pitchforks, be reasonable about the fire Les Miles rumors and look at what is best for the LSU football program.

With three straight losses and the dreams of competing in the College Football Playoff long forgotten, there are plenty of fingers that should be pointed in the LSU football community, including at longtime head coach Les Miles.

But despite mounting media reports indicting the contrary, Miles should not be fired as head coach of the Tigers.

When expectations are raised and the team fails to succeed, fans will always want to place the blame on somebody. Firing Miles would give LSU fans their “pound of flesh”, and it may feel like the right decision at the moment. But at this point, it is too much of a risk to take.

It is easy to blame Miles for all that has gone wrong since the start of November. With a 7-0 start and a potential Heisman Trophy winner in Leonard Fournette running wild out of the backfield, the hopes of winning a national title were as high as they have ever been in the past four years.

After three soul-crushing losses, however, the Bayou Bengals have painfully crashed back down to earth.

Once again, the team came up short when they faced off against their hated rival, the Alabama Crimson Tide, as the Tigers left Tuscaloosa with a bitter 30-16 defeat. The following week, in the Battle for the Boot, LSU was never able to get any momentum going, looking disheartened and uninspired during a 31-14 loss to Arkansas.

To make matters worse, the team’s poor play continued this past Saturday against Ole Miss, a game that culminated in an embarrassing 38-17 defeat, marking the first time the Tigers had lost three consecutive games by double-digits in nearly 50 years.

The 2015 LSU football season has gone up in flames, and Miles is now sitting on the hottest of all hot seats in college football. The news of a $15 million dollar buyout is flying around the LSU community and making national headlines. Sources have told ESPN’s Joe Schad that it is a “very good possibility” that the rumors are true and Miles will be on his way out .

Despite the rumors, Miles is ignoring them and focusing on the task at hand: continuing the Tigers’ dominance over Texas A&M this Saturday.

“I don’t know anything other than, ‘Let’s go to work,'” Miles said at his weekly press conference on Monday. “I’m going to enjoy that. What is the future to me is after the Texas A&M game.”

There is no denying that the level of frustration with Les Miles and the LSU football team has risen to new heights. The team has lost three or more games in four consecutive seasons, and has failed to get over the proverbial hump that is Alabama, beginning with the debacle that was the 2012 BCS National Championship Game.

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Bringing in a fresh face and introducing a new culture may be tempting, but there are simply not many coaches available who are better than Miles. If any.

If LSU decides to go through with the buyout and move on from Miles, they need a high-profile coach to take his place. The leading candidate is current Florida State head coach Jimbo Fisher, who worked as an offensive coordinator at LSU from 2000 to 2006.

There is no guarantee that Fisher will leave the Seminoles for the Tigers, though, and he is electing to ignore all rumors about his future until the end of the college football season.

Per NBC Sports:

"“I have a policy: I don’t speak about jobs, that’s unfair to the players that are there, the players that are here and the coaches here and there. There’s no job opening. That’s a policy that I have. I’m not going to comment on any job in any way, shape or form.”"

Next: 10 best players of the Les Miles era

LSU officials should not make a change for the sake of change, or knee-jerk reaction for that matter. They need to decide what is best for the LSU football program going forward in 2016 and beyond, not what is best for the fan base and deep-pocketed boosters on November 24, 2015.

Many impact players and leaders on the current roster will be returning next year to a team that is stacked with talent and primed to be a national title contender. Their head coach should be as well.

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