Walking Dead: Will 2 wins be enough for Miles to keep his job?

OXFORD, Mississippi — LSU football coach Les Miles’ future is in danger even if the Tigers win out to end the regular season, an LSU Board of Supervisors member said on Friday.

“I think if he wins the next two games, it’s still something that needs to be looked at,” LSU Board of Supervisors member Ronald Anderson told Gannett Louisiana on Friday. “It’s the way they lost the two games.”

No. 15 LSU (7-2, 4-2 Southeastern Conference), which plays at No. 22 Ole Miss (7-3, 4-2 SEC) at 2:30 p.m. Saturday on CBS, lost to unranked, four-loss Arkansas by 31-14 last week and lost, 30-16, to then-No. 4 Alabama the previous week when the Tigers were 7-0 and No. 2 in the College Football Playoff rankings. Those were LSU’s first back-to-back losses by double digits since 1999 when the program was in the midst of eight losing seasons in 11 years.

“If he wins them both, that complicates it,” said Anderson, who has served on the board on and off since 1997. “That’s my opinion. It’s not just the number of losses, but the quality of the losses. The next two games are really important to deciding the future of the program. And you’ve got to look at the progress of the program from the standpoint of a number of years.”

LSU closes the regular season at home against Texas A&M (7-3, 3-3 SEC) on Nov. 28.

Miles, 62, is 110-32 overall for a .774 winning percentage in 11 seasons with a 60-26 mark in the SEC for a .697 winning percentage with a national championship in the 2007-08 season, a 13-1 season and a national championship game appearance in 2011-12, SEC titles in 2007 and ’11 and a SEC West title in 2005. He has seven double-digit win seasons — 2005, ’06, ’07, ’10, ’11, ’12 and ’13.

Since the 8-0 SEC season in 2011, though, LSU has fallen in the SEC to 6-2, 5-3, 4-4 and now is 4-2. The Tigers have also lost five straight games to Alabama, including three by multiple touchdowns — 21-0 in the BCS national championship game on Jan. 9, 2012; 38-17 in 2013; and 30-16 this season.

Miles saw his job status plummet shortly after the Arkansas game. Writers at TigerBait.com and at Tiger Rag Magazine each wrote that Miles would be coaching for his job in LSU’s last two regular season games. Miles, who usually downplays things at press conferences, said himself that the season was in crisis mode during his opening remarks at his weekly press luncheon on Monday.

“It’s a time where as a coach, you just bury your head and you go to work and coach like there’s no tomorrow,” he said. “And it’s time to step up. I think our guys understand that. They understand crisis.”

On Wednesday, a column in the Baton Rouge Advocate said, “There is a serious threat to Miles tenure here,” under the headlines, “Thinning ice,” and “LSU’s Miles coaching for his job the next two weeks.” A Gannett Louisiana column on Thursday said that a member of LSU’s athletic department and two of Miles’ assistant coaches said LSU athletic director Joe Alleva was prepared to fire Miles, depending on how the team played over its final two regular season games.

Miles has lost back-to-back games for the second straight year. The Tigers lost 20-13 to No. 4 Alabama in overtime at home in 2014 and followed that with a 17-0 loss to a 4-5 Arkansas team that was 0-5 in the SEC and 0-17 in the league since 2013. LSU went on to finish 8-5 in 2014.

Against Ole Miss, the Tigers will be trying to avoid the first three-game losing streak in the program since 1999.

Alleva, who arrived at LSU in 2008 from the same job at Duke, had not commented on the record to any media outlets about Miles’ job status as of Friday.

If Miles is fired this year, his contract states he will receive a $15 million buyout. If he is officially fired after Dec. 31 of this year, his buyout would decrease to $12.9 million, which is where it would be after the 2016 season as well. His buyout decreases to $8.6 million after the 2017 season and to $4.3 million after the 2018 season. Miles makes $4.3 million a year and is under contract through the 2019 season.

“It’s kind of premature to say what might or might not happen,” Anderson said. “We’ve got two games left. The Ole Miss game is going to be really important in deciding on how people look at what he’s done at LSU this year.”

Ole Miss was a 6.5-point favorite on Friday after opening the week as a 4.5 favorite.

“It’s really a one-week battle,” LSU senior right tackle Vadal Alexander said Monday when asked what it will take to snap the two-game losing streak. Players are not available after Tuesday.

“All we’re thinking about as a team and all my message is as a leader and the message of all the leaders on the team is, ‘It’s a one game season,’” Alexander said. “We’re going to Ole Miss. We’re going to be ready.”

For Miles, it may be down to a one-game LSU career.