21 months after leading the LSU Tigers to a perfect record and a National Championship, Ed Orgeron and the Tigers have reached an agreement for him to step aside after the season.
The 60-year-old will coach for the remainder of the season as the Tigers are 4-3 after upsetting No. 20 Florida, 49-42 at home on Saturday.
Since the announcement, more things have came out on his eventual departure from the program. There was a reported incident involving the pregnant wife of a high ranking LSU official.
According to the Athletic:
“It created messes for him, like the time Orgeron pulled up to a woman at a gas station wearing exercise attire. “Hey, you look like you work out,” he said, according to multiple sources. “We could work out together.” The woman informed Orgeron she was married and pregnant, to which he responded, “Why does that matter?”
That woman was the wife of a high-ranking LSU official. Word of this reached the LSU Board of Supervisors, the collection of prominent Louisiana attorneys and business owners appointed by the governor who make the most important decisions at LSU. And of course, it reached LSU athletic director Scott Woodward.”
Aside from the wife incident above, Orgeron is a defendant in a Title IX suit against the school. The suit alleges that Orgeron did not report a sexual assault allegation against LSU running back Derrius Guice in 2016. He has denied those allegations.
Guice has been accused of multiple cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault and his statistics have been stripped from LSU’s record books.
Orgeron is among the highest-paid coaches in the FBS, behind only Alabama’s Nick Saban and Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher, with an annual salary of about $9 million. Under the terms of the six-year contract he signed in January 2020, the school owes him a buyout of more than $17 million. He is 49-17 over six seasons with LSU.
