Ed Orgeron covets Kansas job
By Phil Watson
Charlie Weis had barely been gone as head coach of the Kansas Jayhawks for 24 hours when former Ole Miss coach Ed Orgeron—who was the interim coach at USC last season after Lane Kiffin was fired—told a group in Little Rock, Ark., Monday that he’s interested in the gig.
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Orgeron was speaking at the Little Rock Touchdown Club on Monday, exactly a year after he was named interim coach at USC, and made it clear he wants to coach again.
“It’s a Power Five (job),” Orgeron told The USA Today. “(Mark) Mangino went 12-1 and went to the Orange Bowl. It’s in a great conference. His staff proved that you can do it.”
Orgeron was head coach at Ole Miss from 2005-07, going 10-25 in three seasons, before going 6-2 as the interim coach with the Trojans last season. But he was let go when the school hired former USC assistant Steve Sarkisian away from Washington.
“I can’t wait to be the boss of something again,” Orgeron told the crowd. “Somebody’s gonna listen to me—you married men understand what I’m talking about.”
The 53-year-old, affectionately known simply as “Coach O,” got into coaching as an assistant strength coach at Arkansas in 1986.
He was later defensive line coach at Miami (1988-92), linebacker coach at Nicholls State (1994), defensive line coach at Syracuse (1995-97) and assistant head coach and defensive line coach at USC (1998-04) before his stint at Ole Miss.
After he was let go by the Rebels, he spent one season as the defensive line coach for the New Orleans Saints before returning to the college ranks as Kiffin’s assistant head coach at Tennessee in 2009 and followed him to USC in 2010.
Weis was fired Sunday after a 23-0 loss in Lawrence to Texas in the Jayhawks’ Big 12 opener. Weis was 6-22 in two-plus seasons at Kansas after going 35-27 in five years at Notre Dame.
But after going 19-6 with back-to-back BCS bowl appearances in his first two years with the Irish, Notre Dame was just 16-21 over his final three seasons.
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