LSU fans enjoy rare connection in Cajun coach
BATON ROUGE, La. — In the Cajun country spanning the bayous, swamps and marshes of south Louisiana, LSU coach Ed Orgeron is known by the nickname, "Bebe," with the French accent aigu above each letter "e."
When the burley, raspy-voiced Orgeron places a call to someone of his French-speaking mother's generation, he could start the conversation with, "Comment ca-va. C'est Bebe ici," which translates to: "How's it going? It's 'Baby' here."
LSU rarely has had a coach like Orgeron, who is only the third Louisiana native to lead the Tigers since they joined the Southeastern Conference in 1933.
Orgeron knows a good gumbo is all about the roux, that crawfish boils are a Mother's Day tradition and how much better everything from a fricassee to a cochon-de-lait seems to taste when LSU wins. It makes Orgeron's first full season on the job about much more than football.
"It's a wonderful time in our lives," said Orgeron's mother, Cornelia "Coco" Orgeron, who, as the daughter of Frenchspeaking trappers, learned to skin muskrats and trawled for shrimp with her father in her youth. "We can't wait until the football season starts."
At home in Larose, sitting near her kitchen window with a view of a shrimp trawler's outriggers rising from the Bayou Lafourche, she points out that fans everywhere will "see how the Cajuns are really like: loving, giving, hard-working people."
Former New Orleans Saints quarterback Bobby Hebert, a.k.a., "the Cajun Cannon," puts it another way.
"It's a lot of responsibility," said Hebert, Orgeron's teammate on a South Lafourche High School team that won a state championship four decades ago.
"If LSU has success and he's the head coach, then the community where he grew up and the Cajuns will feel like that's a reflection of them," said Hebert, now a New Orleans sports radio personality.
While the 56-year-old Orgeron projects confidence in his ability to handle one of college football's high-profile coaching gigs, he concedes that his Cajun heritage made him a more attractive candidate for LSU.
"They want a home boy. They're proud and they want me to have success," Orgeron said in his second-floor office in a building named for Arkansas native Charles McClendon, who piled up an LSU-record 137 coaching victories when Orgeron was young.
"Obviously, I understand the pressure of LSU. I understand with a couple of losses that love can turn to unhappiness really fast. The support behind me is sky-high, but we have to win."
One could argue Orgeron lacked the resume to replace Les Miles, an Ohio native who won 114 games —including a 2007 national championship — in 11-plus seasons. Another Ohio native, Paul Dietzel, coached LSU to its first national championship in 1958. West Virginia native Nick Saban won the other in 2003.