Ed Orgeron at the Syracuse spring game in 1995.Los Angeles, Calif. -- He’s 50 years old now, with nights that end a whole lot sooner (and drier, too) than they once did. And while he can charm with that Cajun twang of his, make no mistake that Ed Orgeron remains as tough as a slab of bad beef and can, when riled up, use that bayou voice as a foghorn and send a dog, never mind a squirrel, up any tree.
As the defensive coordinator and recruiting ramrod of the unbeaten University of Southern California Trojans, Ed is, these days, a well-compensated coaching heavyweight, and has been for a while. Football factories pay big for their valued help, and Orgeron is likely the most valued member of Lane Kiffin’s USC staff.
But if you ask the man, himself -- if you ask Ed Orgeron if he’d be Ed Orgeron without first having served for three seasons as an aide to Paul Pasqualoni in Syracuse -- he’d cut you off before you could finish blurting the question.
"Paul took a chance on me," admitted Orgeron on Wednesday morning as he sat on a bench outside Heritage Hall, the most famous of the many famous buildings on the USC property that is more oasis than campus. "People told him, ‘You’re taking a shot with that guy. He’s a little wild off the field. You better watch out.’ But Paul took me on and he gave me parameters. And it’s the best thing that has ever happened to me in my career.
"Paul taught me what a coach is, on and off the field. He taught me how to put my money away. He taught me how to be a better human being. He groomed me. My whole lifestyle, my whole approach to my job, changed at Syracuse. It’s been a lot easier here at USC because of what I learned at Syracuse."
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Ed worked with the Orangemen during the campaigns of 1995, ’96 and ’97 when SU went a combined 27-10, qualified for three bowls and climbed at one point to No. 9 in the AP poll. And he used that experience to springboard to gigs with, in order, Southern Cal, Mississippi (where he was the head coach for three years), the New Orleans Saints, Tennessee and USC again.
But there was a time when Orgeron, once a rising star at the University of Miami where he ran the defensive line for four seasons under Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson, was deemed untouchable, almost unclean. Crazier than he should have been (and crazier yet when he drank), Ed was fired by the Hurricanes after he was arrested for head-butting a bouncer outside a Baton Rouge saloon two days before his 31st birthday.
Thus, did he find himself -- broke, unemployed and without much of anything in the way of prospects -- on a porch swing in Larose, La., a town of 7,300 or so in Lafourche Parish, listening to his dad telling him that the football sun would rise again. And there Orgeron would sit for a sorrowful year that would be filled with introspection and a whole lot of head-shaking.
He's the head coach at Connecticut now, but once upon a time Paul Pasqualoni ran the football show in Syracuse. One of his assistants during those Orange days -- Ed Orgeron, currently an aide at Southern California -- will tell you that Pasqualoni was a savior. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)"I was his life," Ed said of his father. "I mean, we were rolling down there in Miami. And off the field I just wasn’t behaving right. I was living in the fast lane and not taking care of the basics. And there was my dad, a true example of unconditional love, telling me, ‘Son, it’s gonna be all right. Son, I’ll support you. Son, just get yourself right.’
"Do you know how hard it was to walk up those stairs? I was once on top of the world at Miami, and there I was sleeping in my bedroom again with those Bitty basketball trophies on the dresser. But I cleaned myself up, got myself in shape and got a volunteer position at Nicholls State. I went from coaching Warren Sapp and winning the national championship to driving my mama's old Nissan station wagon 45 minutes to and from practice. It took a full year to get a job -- a volunteer job -- but I was coaching again."
And he was once more barking at those who needed it. And he was hoping that somebody beyond Thibodaux, the home of Nicholls State, would hear -- never realizing, of course, it would be Paul Pasqualoni with the big ears a world away in Syracuse.
It was at the coaches’ national convention in Dallas in the winter of ’95 that Ed found his way into the hotel room of Pasqualoni, who’d sought out Orgeron after having been forever impressed with that old Miami line play. And wearing blue jeans and sneakers and a jacket he wore when fishing, Ed put on a show for the Syracuse coach by getting down into his defensive lineman’s stance . . . by pushing around the coffee table . . . by sprouting, as he describes, "snot bubbles" from his nose.
"There was Paul in his jacket-and-tie," Orgeron said. "He looked like the president. But I had to get out of the bayou, man. That was my chance. I gave him everything I had."
Apparently, Pasqualoni was impressed because he hired Ed. And then he mentored Ed. And Ed will say that he saved Ed. And now, as Orgeron prepares his Southern California defense to stymie his old school, the one Pasqualoni left nearly seven years ago, on Saturday evening in the storied Los Angeles Coliseum he remains forever grateful.
"I love that man," Orgeron said. "I love Paul. I have never seen a man work so hard and give his life -- I mean, his total life -- to a program the way he did. I mean, Paul worked. And we, his staff, worked. He taught me about detail, about organization. Believe me, I was razor-sharp as a coach when I left Paul. I really was."
Married (while in Syracuse), Ed insists he’s in bed these nights no later than 10 o’clock because, well, he’s older now. And he’s smarter. And he says he owes it to his USC club to be as energized as he can possibly be for its daily practices that begin as early as 7:45 on certain weekday mornings.
"You heard me out there," said Orgeron, cooled by a soft Californa breeze as he sat on that bench outside Heritage Hall. "I can still get pretty worked up out there."
The Trojans have Syracuse, and the guy who used to lead the Orange, to thank for that.
(Bud Poliquin's column, "To The Point" observations and freshly-written on-line commentaries appear virtually every day on syracuse.com. His work can also be regularly found on the pages of The Post-Standard newspaper. Additionally, Poliquin can be heard weekday mornings between 10 a.m.-12 noon on the sports-talk radio show, "Bud & The Manchild," on The Score 1260-AM).