Per multiple reports, former LSU head coach Les Miles is suing the school over wins it vacated from his tenure as head football coach — games he alleges made him ineligible for the College Football Hall of Fame.
In addition to LSU, the NCAA and the National Football Foundation, which oversees the College Football Hall of Fame, are also named defendants in his complaint.
The CFB Hall of Fame requires a career win percentage of .600 as part of its criteria for nomination. Miles had a .665 win percentage but it dropped to .597 after LSU vacated 37 of his wins from 2012-15.
Now, the 70-year-old coach is petitioning the court to allow his vacated wins to be counted to restore his eligibility.
“Defendants stripped Les Miles — indisputably one of the most esteemed college football coaches in the history of the state of Louisiana — of his established eligibility for the College Football Hall of Fame without an opportunity to be heard,” his complaint reads. “Les Miles now seeks appropriate remedy for the blot placed on his good name and reputation when Defendants deprived him of his Hall of Fame eligibility without due process.”
LSU forfeited those 37 wins as a penalty for committing a Level I violation. According to the NCAA, someone connected to the LSU athletics department, who was also a donor for the Tiger Athletic Foundation, paid the father of a recruit more than $180,000 as part of an embezzlement scheme.
It was discovered the father was paid for work that wasn’t done for a nonprofit foundation of which he was supposed to be employed by for over five years from 2012-16.
Miles reportedly believes the university hastily forfeited his wins as part of a self-inflicted punishment to appease the NCAA during its investigation into the school. He’s arguing he was never allowed to make a case for himself.
Per ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg, LSU promised Miles it would help “undo the injustice” but then “went back on its word.”
