Record Deal
My senior year of high school, we had a great basketball season – we won the conference and made it to the State Tournament in Madison. While it was a dream season, it ended in heartbreak after a last second prayer shot by Wilmot, who went on to win the championship.
Of all the teams at the tournament, we had the worst record at 7-13. One of our players transferred from the Menomonee school so he could take college prep courses. Despite our coach triple checking that all of his paperwork had been filed, our athletic director missed one.
While he was a reserve player, we still had to forfeit each of the games he played in, along with our conference title. We felt it was unfair, but our coach simply said, “Rules are rules,” and it just galvanized us as a team.
So, to a certain extent, I can feel Les Miles’ pain.
Miles coached football at Louisiana State University from 2005 to 2016. He won a national championship there in 2007 and two SEC titles. He also coached at Oklahoma State and Kansas. His career record was 145-73, which is a winning percentage of .665.
In 2023, however, LSU vacated 37 of his wins because of recruiting violations stemming from impermissible benefits paid to the father of former player Vadal Alexander by a former booster. The wins occurred during Alexander’s playing career from 2012 to 2015 under Miles, who went 37-14 during that stretch. The vacated football wins were announced alongside other penalties for LSU’s football and men’s basketball programs by the NCAA’s Independent Accountability Resolution Process.
As a result, Miles is suing the school because the vacated wins drop his career record to 108-73, a winning percentage of .597. To be eligible for the College Football Hall of Fame, coaches must have served as a head coach for more than 10 years, coached more than 100 games, have not coached in the last three years – and have a career winning percentage of .600.
Miles also named the NCAA and the National Football Foundation, which manages the College Football Hall of Fame, as defendants. The lawsuit states he was deprived of property rights to the vacated wins and his nomination for the Hall of Fame, which must be done by those affiliated with an NCAA member school.
“Our theory is over the course of his career, Les had certain achievements that he had a right to accept – in this instance, they triggered being on the [Hall of Fame] ballot,” Miles’ attorney Peter Ginsberg told ESPN. “When that was stripped of him, without any notice or due process, that action effectively deprived him of the property right to be on the ballot.”
Ginsberg said Miles was never made aware of the NCAA investigation impacting the years that he coached, nor was he interviewed during the process. According to the lawsuit, LSU’s “decision not to provide Miles with any form of due process was made in agreement with the NCAA, and in furtherance of the LSU Defendants’ negotiations with the NCAA concerning additional and more-severe penalties that otherwise likely would have been imposed on LSU and its athletics program.”
Miles took three years off after being fired from LSU but was hired by Kansas in 2019. He went 3-18 in two seasons, including an 0-9 record in 2020. He was fired in March of 2021 – not because of his record, but due to allegations that he had behaved inappropriately toward female students during his time at LSU.
Apparently, Kansas’s football team didn’t have a website during Miles’ tenure there because they couldn’t put three W’s together.
Reg P. Wydeven
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