BCS Championship 2012: LSU's Les Miles Will Finally Escape Nick Saban's Shadow

Les Miles has gotten a lot more criticism than praise during his time at LSU. Last year, there were cries to get him fired after a bad game against Tennessee. Yet here he is with a chance to win his second national championship in five years, and he has to do it against Nick Saban and Alabama. 

Saban is the one that built up the LSU program in the early 2000s. He led them to their first championship in 45 years in 2003. When he left to coach the Miami Dolphins in 2005, Miles took over and has kept the momentum going. 

Yet despite all of Miles' success at LSU, he has always lived in the shadow of Saban. Jim Kleinpeter of the New Orleans Times Picayune put it best in his article about Miles, Saban and former LSU athletic director Skip Bertman. 

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On Jan. 3 five years ago, talk of LSU and Alabama was rampant in this city. LSU was set to finish its second season under Coach Les Miles with a smashing victory against Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl. Hours before kickoff, Nick Saban stole the spotlight.

Saban had just flown to Tuscaloosa, Ala., from Miami after agreeing to a contract to coach the Crimson Tide, walking away from the Dolphins after two years. It was all any LSU fan could talk about while walking to the Superdome or setting up a home viewing party.

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Miles appears to have broken through with the first 13-0 record in LSU history and can create even more distance with a victory Monday. His time at LSU has been marked by head-scratching moments, whether clock-management malfunctions, his inimitable fractured syntax or awkward word combinations.

But he’s also 3-2 in head-to-head meetings with Saban and has won two straight after the 9-6 overtime victory in Tuscaloosa on Nov. 5. His .815 winning percentage (75-17) trails only Tennessee’s Robert Neyland (.829) all-time among SEC schools.

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It is an easy cliche to say that this is a game that both teams have to win and neither can afford to lose, but in Miles' case that is the perfect way to describe the BCS Championship Game on Monday night. 

He has done everything that he can possibly to do to win over LSU fans and put himself on a pedestal with the best coaches in the country, but the one thing that he has not been able to put his own stamp on the SEC because of Saban. 

Miles is always going to be the second name that you think of when talking about SEC coaches. That is how big Saban is in that conference, and in college football. 

But when Miles is able to lead his team to another victory over Alabama on the biggest stage that the sport has to offer, we will look at that talk about him getting fired after the Tennessee game last year and wonder what we were thinking. 

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