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Les Miles was dogged by controversy over the course of a college football coaching career that seemingly came to an end following his disastrous stint at Kansas, and the man who spent 12 years at LSU is now suing the school for costing him a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame due to vacated wins stemming from one of the scandals he ended up at the center of.
It seemed like the LSU Tigers were taking a bit of a risk when they hired Les Miles prior to the start of the 2005 season; he pulled off some notable upsets as the head coach at Oklahoma State but posted a fairly mediocre 28-21 record with the Cowboys.
However, that turned out to be a pretty solid move for a program that went 11-2 in his first two seasons as head coach before capping off the 2007 campaign with a win over Ohio State in the BCS Championship Game.
Miles was ultimately fired by LSU after getting off to a 2-2 start in his 12th season, and he posted a 114-34 record with the Tigers before being kicked to the curb.
However, the official record books state he went 77-34 due to the 37 wins the team agreed to vacate in 2023 in the wake of a scandal involving former offensive lineman Vadal Alexander, whose father received more than $180,000 thanks to a booster who used a children’s hospital to embezzle the funds.
That development meant Miles was no longer eligible to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, which has a .600 winning percentage threshold for coaches who also need to have at least 100 games under their belt (Miles currently sits at .597).
According to Adam Rittenberg of ESPN, Miles—who would have been eligible for induction in 2023—has now decided to file a lawsuit against LSU (which also names the NCAA and the College Football Hall of Fame) for vacating the wins that cost him his spot.
Miles' lawsuit also lists the NCAA and the National Football Foundation, which manages the Hall of Fame, as defendants. His longtime agent George Bass said LSU "promised us help in undoing this injustice" and then "went back on its word."
— Adam Rittenberg (@ESPNRittenberg) June 17, 2024
At first glance, it seems like LSU’s lawyers could argue Miles has no one to blame but himself for being left out in the cold.
He posted a 105-55 record between his time at Oklahoma State and LSU with the vacated victories taken into account, which meant had a .656 winning percentage for his career before going 3–18 at Kansas—and if a single one of those losses had gone the other way, he’d be sitting at .602.
It seems like a bit of a Hail Mary, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this plays out.