LSU Football: Top 5 all-time worst SEC coaching hires
By Zach Ragan
4. Ed Orgeron — Ole Miss (2005-2007)
If this isn’t inspiring, I don’t know what is.
Ed Orgeron is one of the top three coaches in the nation right now, but it wasn’t always that way.
When Ole Miss hired Coach O in late 2004, he was an accomplished assistant coach who had developed a reputation at USC for being a great defensive line coach and recruiter.
Orgeron also held a deep love for USC. Because of that deep love, he tried to turn Ole Miss into the SEC version of USC.
And it didn’t work.
The offense proved to be disastrous. The Rebels only beat two teams with winning records during Orgeron’s tenure in Oxford.
Coach O didn’t exactly inherit a great situation at Ole Miss after David Cutcliffe was fired. But unfortunately for the Rebels, things never got any better during Orgeron’s three years at the helm.
A lot of that had to do with Coach O’s inability to delegate. He meddled in every part of the football program.
But without Orgeron’s time at Ole Miss, he almost certainly isn’t the coach he is today.
It’s obvious from the success that Orgeron has enjoyed at LSU (and even as USC’s interim head coach in 2013) that he learned a lot from his failures at Ole Miss.