Louisiana Voice

Speculation has begun on Paul Mainieri’s successor as head baseball coach at LSU with The Baton Rouge Advocate’s report today that former Oregon State University Coach Pat Casey was interested in the position.

I’ve never met the 62-year-old Casey but I feel hiring him could be problematic from a public relations standpoint for LSU.

LSU is in the throes of an investigation of systemic sexual harassment in its athletic program, from former head football coach Les Miles and claims of individual players assaulting and even beating women. With the investigations and lawsuits over various claims swirling, hiring Casey might raise a few eyebrows.

He was coach of Oregon State 24 years, compiling a 900-458-6 record that included six College World Series appearances and three national championships (2006, 2007 and 2018). He was named national coach of the year five times.

But his tenure also included its own controversy in the manner in which he handled the admission by pitcher Luke Heimlich that he had molested his six-year-old niece when he was 15.

When world of his guilty plea surfaced in 2018, he withdrew from the Beavers’ CWS roster but vehemently denied the accusation to Sports Illustrated, saying that he “accepted a plea deal only to avoid a trial and jail time and to keep his schooling and baseball on track.”

If you know anything about police intimidation and overly aggressive prosecutors, you also know his claim is believable.

Without speculating on his guilt or innocence, it’s common for police, whenever a suspect fails to invoke his privilege to remain silent or to ask for an attorney, to browbeat the suspect into a confession just to end the barrage of accusations and questions. There are many documented cases of innocent people admitting guilt after hours upon hours of grilling just so they can sleep or go to the bathroom.

I know there are those who insist they would never admit to a crime they didn’t commit, but until you’re subjected to that kind of treatment, you really don’t know how strong or weak your resolve would be until you actually find yourself in that situation.

It’s also common for prosecutors to rely on jailhouse snitches and to threaten arrestees with humiliating trials and long sentences unless they plea to a lesser charge. Those kinds of deals are often accepted just to end the ordeal – even if the suspect is totally innocent. Moreover, there are documented cases where innocent persons are convicted and have served long sentences before exculpatory evidence surfaces that clears their names.

Even then, some are threatened with a new trial unless they plea to a lesser charge in order to get released for time already served. That’s an underhanded way for prosecutors to avoid legal action: if there is a guilty plea, even to a lesser charge, it’s hard to win a lawsuit against police or prosecutors.

That’s a lot of verbiage to get to the point that LSU could be buying a lot of bad PR if Casey is hired.

There are some other viable candidates for the job, though they have yet to express any interest in the position, But it’s a sure bet they’d be tempted by a huge increase in salary from what they’re presently being paid.

There’s Lane Burroughs up at Louisiana where the Bulldogs just compiled a 42-20 record and came within one win of advanced to a super-regional playoff against number one Arkansas. From a personal standpoint, I would not like that. Tech is my Alma Mater and I’d just as soon see Burroughs continue to develop my favorite sport in Ruston.

And then there is Jeff Willis.

Who?

Exactly. Willis has seemingly labored in obscurity as athletic director and head baseball coach at LSU-Eunice. He is fresh from leading the Bengals to an astonishing 51-7 record and the school’s seventh junior college national championship. That’s two more championships than LSU won under the legendary Skip Bertman.

Yes, I know junior college is not the Southeast Conference. No one would ever venture such a claim. But still, he assembled the players (three All-Americans on this year’s team), coached them and won against his peers.

And no one knows the difference between coaching a small program and one like LSU better than Smoke Laval who succeeded Bertman when he came in from the University of Louisiana at Monroe. Even though he took the Tigers to the CWS, he never seemed like the proper fit and was eventually sent packing in favor or Manieri.

Still, it would be nice to see LSU name a proven local talent for the job.

Meanwhile, the 2021 version of Manieri Tigers are still very much alive in their quest to punch another ticket to Omaha.

Go Tigers!