SEC News: Les Miles sues LSU over vacated wins making him ineligible for College Football Hall of Fame
You never know quite what you’ll see when perusing the SEC news headlines. This conference has a flair for the bombastic, but I really think this is the first time I’ve seen something like this.
Les Miles is known for being a character. Whether it’s eating grass, saying any number of eccentric things in his strange, intense, midwestern way, or having any number of special teams gaffes occur on his squads, he is a figure well-entrenched in the collective consciousness of college football fans.
For that reason alone, it seems as though he’d be an easy inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame. However, some recent goings-on have precluded that from being a possibility.
As has been in the news lately, being voted into the College Football Hall of Fame requires achieving a certain win percentage: you must have won 60% of your total games, or you are ineligible. The public outcry against this requirement has been loud, as the late, inimitable Mike Leach failed to reach this mark.
Les Miles, of course, easily met the threshold for win percentage. That is, until recently.
I know this may shock you, but LSU has apparently been engaged in underhanded practices in the past. This includes putting a player—OL Vadal Alexander—out on the field who was ruled to have received ineligible benefits, thus vacating all the wins of which he was a part.
Since Miles was the coach during this point, these wins are scrubbed from his record, and his record during his coaching career resultantly dropped to 108-73. That’s a winning percentage of 59.7%. And no, they don’t round up.
As a result, Miles has filed a lawsuit against LSU, The National Football Foundation, and the College Football Hall of Fame, alleging that he was stripped of eligibility without due process. You can read the entire thing at this link.
The SEC never fails to provide drama, does it?