Football season is getting peppered with bad news.
Stadiums are full and games are exciting, but the sport cannot escape negative headlines.
Now a championship-winning coach is done after one humiliating sex scandal.
In the course of two weeks, three separate championship-winning coaches have been rocked by scandals.
Super Bowl-winning head coach Jon Gruden was forced to resign from the Las Vegas Raiders after embarrassing emails from ten years ago leaked.
Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer, who won national champions at Florida and Ohio State*, had to make a public apology after getting cozy with a woman other than his wife at a bar in Columbus.
Now Ed Orgeron is out less than two seasons after leading the LSU Tigers to the national championship in 2019.
Orgeron will stay on to finish the season, but he will not be back in 2022.
Apparently, the problems began when Orgeron got divorced in 2020.
Orgeron’s personal life started to affect his public life as the head coach of LSU.
From 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.
Orgeron’s problems didn’t stop there.
He caught flak for appearing in a picture in bed with his girlfriend.
Coach O won that championship got a divorce and turnt up pic.twitter.com/MERclfKWMf
— Real Name: Grover (@DontrellChillis) October 21, 2020
And Orgeron allegedly allowed women he was courting to bring their sons to practice and participate in drills.
With regards to Orgeron’s personal life bleeding into his coaching life, sources also tell @WBRZ that there were multiple practices where “girlfriends” would be in attendance at prax and would “interfere”. To the degree of children of the women taking part in drills with team.
— Matt Trent (@MCTrent23) October 17, 2021
Orgeron also didn’t participate in the Black Lives Matter-inspired protests of 2020 with a level of enthusiasm to the liking of some current and former players.
More from The Athletic:
[W]hen teams across the country were skipping practices to hold peaceful protests of racial inequality after the death of George Floyd, Orgeron did not join his team. When the players asked Orgeron to take part, he sent assistant coaches to meet them and temper the situation. When Orgeron eventually met with his players in the LSU president’s office, sources said players were not happy with Orgeron’s contributions.
Orgeron also sealed his fate with the “woke” contingent when he went on Fox News and said he loved Donald Trump.
Orgeron is now the second LSU coach in a row to be undone by an embarrassing sex scandal.