The Josh Innes Show - The return of Coach O?

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

Coach O made the Barstool rounds yesterday and expressed interest in a return to coaching. Yes, please. Could Coach O get big time Head Coaching job? What would he accept? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, the best news of the day from yesterday is that Coach O wants to coach again. He was on all the barstool shows. And I don't really, this is not a knock on barstool. I just really don't care about a lot of their content. Like, I like Portnoy. I admire Portnoy. I like what he's built. Like, good for you, bro.

Like, from nothing to something. Fucking kicks ass. So good for you. I just don't really care about the programming. But I also don't listen to a lot of stuff anyway. But my man, T. Bob is on there now. And I think T. Bob is great, and the best programming you've ever watched is these LSU postgame shows,

the Whiskey and Wine Post Game Show with him and one of my best friends, Matt. And they are usually after LSU losses, they are fantastic. And I'm going to miss him on there. I don't even know if I want to watch it anymore. My heart hurts too much because it was just so damn good. But now he's at Barstool, so he's part of some conversations with Coach O. And he was on all the shows. And I don't know.

There's just some of these guys I don't like. Like, I respect the fact that it's as big as it is. Like, who's the guy? There's the one guy, Brandon, something. And I always see his videos. And I think I just hate his voice. Like, Brandon Walker, does that sound right? Like, I don't, look, again, I should know this maybe, but I just don't follow barstool as much.

I follow Portnoy. I like Portnoy. I like the pizza reviews. I respect the shit out of what they've built. I just don't really enjoy a lot of the content. Does that make sense? I don't know. But let's get into some Coach O's stuff here after these words.

So, Coach O on Barstool yesterday talking with Teabobbob here. You're starting to feel the coaching it again? Think about it, Tom, Bob. It's coming, you know. I text the boys too much during the day. Hey, what's going on, man? I was pregnant with Daddy. He was so long, man.

You know, you can only go to the beach so many times. You know what I'm saying, guys? Look, I have, I live 4.2 miles from South Point, okay? I run that boardwalk and that beach every day. So I have recruited, not recruited, evaluated all the talent they have. Yep. Yep. So you're not recruiting, though.

It's a big difference. I've got to be careful what I'm saying here. Nobody, no Cam Ward slipped through the cracks. I know every five star. Yep. for 4.4.2 miles, I promise you. The dude's hysterical, and he's always been hysterical. It wasn't hysterical when the team was terrible at LSU or mediocre at LSU.

It was great when they won the national championship. But in reality, there was a lot about Coach O that was a disaster at LSU. And that's why it ended the way it ended. Like, it ended very poorly with a lot of bad shit going down. And I don't think O was ever going to be a head coach at a major level again. I think that's obvious. Like the second you hear that Coach O wants to coach again, your first thought is, well, this guy's been a coach at two SEC schools, which is fucking bonkers. The fact that Coach O, who was arguably one of the worst coaches of all time when he was at Ole Miss, it was a disaster at Ole Miss.

It was a historically bad situation that nothing positive came out. It was a joke. Coach O'L.M. at Ole Miss was a joke. and then he got the LSU job and won a national championship. Wow, what a world. But Coach O will not get a third SEC job. There's not an SEC gig, whether it's Kentucky or Mississippi State or Vanderbilt or wherever.

Coach O is never going to get those jobs. Could he get a head coaching job at, you know, a McNeese state? Of course. Could he get a coach at Louisiana Monroe, a Louisiana, Lafayette? somewhere like that, sure. If he wanted to be a head coach, he could do that. He could also go somewhere and become a badass position coach. Those are all possibilities, right?

Like, could you see him being a defensive line coach, which he's been, and he's been great at it in his career? A defensive line coach where he can coach, recruit, and have a good time. The guy seems like the best time ever. That's the thing about Louisiana dudes. Like, real hardcore Louisiana guys are just fun dudes. They're fun. They're outgoing.

They've got the great accent. Everything about Coach O is fantastic. Man, I've been out there on the beach. Coach O'Bin' on the beach. And I'll go out there. And when I say I've been recruiting, I've been evaluating talent. That means I'm checking out pussy. I'm out there looking at a lot of snatch.

I'm the snatch bandit. I go for a jog. And then I go out there. And I say, go tagos. And I look at a bunch of titties bouncing. Go tiger. Like, that's essentially his life. And it sounds great.

Like it actually sounds like the greatest life ever When my man says there's only so many times you can go to the beach Maybe that's possible You know the old saying is like even the hottest chick in the world Some guy's ready to kick her out of bed He's tired of her right Maybe going to South Beach every day And jogging every day

And in his words Checking out the talent Evaluating the talent every day Like and maybe that's that Like maybe there's just There comes a time when you get bored with it You want to coach I respect that

Because look I was out of a job for a year, over a year, right? Because I got fired and, uh, no, about a year. I was out of work for about a year. Not working gets boring. Like you want to work. So I get it. I understand that. But I also wasn't running the beaches in Miami. Now, he's been doing this for like two or three years. You know, I was out about a year and was ready to blow my head off. So, but he's in Miami evaluating the talent ready to go. I'd love to see coach, like I like, I like coach. I like Coach O. When they hired Coach O, I felt like it was a disaster. And for the most part, it was a disaster. Here's what Coach O did well. Coach O brought in Joe Burrow. Coach O gets Joe Burrow,

LSU wins national championship in the second year of Joe Burrow. If you look at everything that surrounded Joe Burrow, it was a disaster. And by surrounding it, obviously not the talent. They had great players around him. But everything, like every outcome that surrounded, like that was around Joe Borough winning the national championship in 2019, for the most part, was a disaster. And a lot of it was, well, this guy didn't want the job, this fell through at the last minute. Like, you remember, I think it was Thanksgiving night when it was announced that it seemed like Jimbo Fisher was going to be the head coach at LSU. Then the next day, it's ladies and gentlemen, Coach-o is the head coach. And a lot of Louisiana people were excited because it's Coach O and it's Louisiana.

and like, it sucks that he didn't become an all-time great there and was still the head coach and was competing for the national championship every year because there is nobody and there will never be anyone who is more perfect to be successful at LSU than Coach O. That person does not exist. He is the perfect guy. And when things were going really good, I was in love with the guy. When I went to that Texas game in 2019 and there was that shootout against Texas and they won and we're waiting outside the stadium after the game

and Jilly walks up to Coach O and says, can I have a hug? So Jilly hugs Coach O and things. I'm like, holy shit. I love this guy. This is great. But then also when things got bad, it made it really easy to go,

why the fuck do these guys have Nick Sabin and we have this dipshit? So like, look, he had no choice but to be really good or he was going to catch a lot of shit. But I love the guy. How can you not? How can you not listen to Coach

show and be like, like, how can you not fall in love with this guy? I listen to that whole show. I listen to some of the high. I can't say I listen to the whole show. But a lot of the clips were posted on Twitter, obviously. And some of the shit this guy says, he's hysterical. And you know he's hysterical. And he's just so chill.

Like the guy has the vibe of someone who just got paid $17 million to sit on his ass. Or in his words, do you know, go jog the beach and evaluate the talent. Go to go down there. I'm going to evaluate the Italian. I just told you I got to pay 17 million to do nothing I mean he's tan I mean super fucking tan like so tan that his skin like glistens right he's all lotioned up feeling good

once to coach again like any team in the country I could argue pro or college should call coach O because he's been a pro defensive line coached I think he's with the Saints at well I know he's with the Saints I don't know if he's coached any other stops but I know he's with the Saints you want to tell me that coached wouldn't make a program. I'm talking big schools. Now, as a head coach, he ain't going to be the coach at Florida anytime soon.

The man's been a coach at two major SEC programs, one major SEC program and Ole Miss. But the guy is coached at very high levels. He's never going to be that again. Like, I was thinking about this the other day with Les Miles. Les Miles went to Kansas, right? And it helped Kansas. I don't think, like, look, Kansas still sucked and they still sucked when he was there. It was never going to work because Les Miles was someone who wasn't winning games because he was a good coach.

Les Miles was winning games because he just had so much talent that they were able to overcome the fact that Les Miles was such a shitty coach. Les Miles, look, won a lot of games and before games were taken away from and wins were taken away and vacated, he was eligible for the College Football Hall of Fame. And I'll tell you that a guy that won one national championship and played for another and won, what, 70-something percent of his games if I had to guess at LSU, high 60s, Low 70% of his games, if I had to guess at LSU, before the wins were vacated, would be a national champion. A guy that coached at three after he went to Kansas, he was the head coach at three power conference universities. It took an underachieving kind of program at Oklahoma State, made them competitive, goes to LSU.

But of course, Les Miles won because LSU had more talent than everybody. They had better coordinators. That's why all their coordinators would leave and go get jobs elsewhere. Look, he was a CEO of that situation, but it's not like Les Miles with some brilliant strategist or anything like that. Les Miles and LSU back before NIL and everything else went out and got all the studs in Louisiana, and that is why they won. If you put up a wall around Louisiana and get the best talent per capita, there's not a better state in America for talent than LSU. So you go and you put up a wall around it. But when Les Miles got the job at Kansas, I watched a whole reality show about it,

you knew it was going to fail because everything that Les Miles represented was what football was going away from, like three yards in a cloud of dust, old school conservative coach. We're not talking about going five wide here and like playing the current brand of football. We're talking old school smash mouth, big 10, three yards in a cloud of dust, and it was never going to work. Kansas hired him because he's got a name and ended up firing him because of controversy, but he didn't win shit there. But could you see a scenario where Coach O ends up the coach at a Kansas or ends up the coach at somewhere like that? Possibly, right? Like there's a lot of guys that get jobs just because they're famous.

Coach O has a national championship. And here's your option. Here's the other thing that smaller schools deal with. So smaller schools deal with this problem. If you hire the young up-and-coming hot coach, you're probably going to lose him, right? Like look at Louisiana. Well, they call it Louisiana. It's Louisiana Lafayette or Southwest Louisiana, okay?

You look at them, and they hired Billy Napier. Billy Napier instantly became the hottest coachy name out there and eventually took the Florida job where he'll probably get fired this year. But Billy Napier was the head coach at ULL. You keep him for a couple years, and then he moves on. You have to ask yourself, if you're one of these universities. You have to ask if you are fine with being the stepping stone school for every hot coach. Like U of H was, and I don't know if you would consider that because they're the big 10 now or 12 now.

But like U of H was like that. Tom Herman would be there a couple years and leave and Kevin Sumlin there for a couple of years and leave. Like it was a stepping stone gig for a long time. Like that's how you got to the SEC is coaching at a place like Houston. I think Houston now would be too big for a coach, you open. I bet that guy could recruit the shit out of Texas, man. So who knows? I mean, not that that job's open, but you get my point.

But in situations like that, when you start to see all these guys, like, do you want to be a stepping stone school where a new hot coach coaches for three years and goes on to Texas or Oklahoma or Vanderbilt or Purdue? Or do you want to have a guy that will stay there because no one else is going to ever want him because he's an older guy and this is kind of the end of the road? There have been guys who've done that, right? I mean, look at what you got with Mack Brown at North Carolina is a great example. you know that he took that gig after the Texas thing and was out for a while and he's coaching a North Carolina up until last year like and he stayed there he was there for a long time too so it depends on what you're looking to do as a university but like if you've got a guy like Coach O who I would imagine if he were coaching at a Northwestern

state which is his alma mater in Louisiana if he were the coach there as long as he were successful that dude could stay there for 10 years if he wanted to but if I'm coach O would you rather be the head coach in a lesser you know a lesser you glamorous spot, or would you rather be the defensive line coach at Miami and still live in Miami and evaluate the talent in Miami? Or would you rather live in Nackettish, Louisiana? What would you prefer? But I think that guy will have his pick of whatever job he wants as a defensive coach. I think there's no doubt about that. And look, you can put him on any staff you want. He'd make them better. He's a great coach. It's a great defensive line coach, outstanding

recruiter. So we can make fun of the fact that he wants to be a coach and you can say he's ever going to be a head coach again probably won't but no he at least in a big level but the guy can coach and the guy's got a great personality every human fucking loves him he's going to get a gig