College football has not had a more colorful character in recent years than Ed Orgeron. He is unemployed this year after being fired by LSU mid-way through last season and there is a lot of speculation about what he might do next.
On Thursday’s edition of The Paul Finebaum Show, Bruce Feldman of The Athletic and FOX Sports sounded pretty confident in his prediction.
“My guess is he is probably going to do TV in some form next year,” Feldman said. “I don’t know if that means he will be a colleague of yours at SEC Network and ESPN or you know, where he ends up.”
Feldman dismissed any concerns about the audience being able to understand Ed Orgeron. He compared the coach’s gruff Cajun accent to his FOX colleague David Ortíz. He noted that Ortíz is the network’s most popular baseball analyst despite speaking with a heavy Dominican accent.
Success in television, especially in an analyst role Feldman says, is largely about the audience liking your stories and being loyal to you. Certainly, Orgeron can provide that. The question then becomes what is the right way to use him?
“I don’t see him going to be some game analyst or anything like that,” Bruce Feldman told Finebaum. “He’ll probably be in somebody’s studio for pregame or halftime analysis.”
Like BSM’s own Demetri Ravanos, Feldman thinks Orgeron could be very successful in television. There will always be some lingering concerns about his dedication though. After all, the man does have a national championship to his name as a head coach.
Feldman told Finebaum that he expects Ed Orgeron to be all in for one year on TV and then decide on his future. However, he pointed out that Ed Orgeron already had his dream job as head coach of LSU, the team he grew up rooting for. Maybe there is nothing left in the coaching world that interests him like that.
“I don’t see him wanting to be somebody’s defensive line coach again and I’m not sure what kind of head coaching job realistically he’d want to jump into.”