Ed Orgeron discusses thought process on decision whether to coach or not in 2022

After getting fired last winter, former LSU head coach Ed Orgeron knew pretty immediately that he didn’t want to get back into coaching right away.

Orgeron mentioned at the time that he had some “things” he wanted to do. As it turns out, Coach O is going to spend the year helping to set up his sons’ futures in the coaching profession. Once he gets them “settled,” he says he will get back into the game himself.

“I wanted to take a year off,” Orgeron said on the Dan Patrick Show this week. “Think about this, I’ve been going to university, since I started college, for 42 years. I wanted to just take one year off. Settle down. Let the dust settle.

“I’ve got three great sons. They all want to coach. We’re trying to get them analyst jobs. They were all going to be with me, so there’s a little adjustment there. We got one settled, one’s taking a year off and one’s going to try to get in the NFL. I wanted to spend my time working with them, settle down, and see what’s available for me next year.”

It was 2014 when Orgeron last took a season off. After the hiatus, LSU hired him as the defensive line coach and the rest is history.

Orgeron also made stops at Arkansas, Miami, Ole Miss, Syracuse, and Tennessee throughout his career. Most of his career has been in the SEC, mainly as a positional coach.

Orgeron: LSU firing was ‘fair’

National title-winning head coach Ed Orgeron said this week that he doesn’t have any bad blood with his former school and understands why he was let go.

“Yes,” Orgeron said when asked by Dan Patrick if LSU was fair to him. “I do believe that. Listen, I left LSU with no regrets. I knew that one day it was going to happen. Look, you can’t have two losing seasons at LSU – that’s the standard. We set the standard at 15-0. They gave me a great settlement. I don’t have to work again in my life if I don’t want to. They were very fair to me.”

Orgeron and the school agreed on a buyout of $16.95 million, which will pay him in monthly installments through Dec. 2025. He has received two payments so far – one for $5.68 million in December and one for $667,000 in January. He’s scheduled to receive his next payment of $1 million in June.

On3’s Tyler Mansfield contributed to this report.