Bo Pelini unfiltered: LSU coach is ready for his second act

BATON ROUGE, La. — Bo Pelini is the last member of the LSU football team left in the school’s operations building. Across the street at Tiger Stadium, everyone else is feasting at the program’s annual pre-spring crawfish boil. That might appeal to some, but not Pelini, an Italian Midwesterner who much prefers red sauce over mud bugs. The crustaceans are too much work for too little payoff, he says.

Anyhow, he’s stuck in that office of his because an interview is running long, and he seems fine with it (whether that’s to avoid crawfish or not, who can say). The interview, in fact, is running so long that dusk approaches through the window over Pelini’s right shoulder, signaling the end of the final day before the reigning national champions begin spring practice. In an emblematic moment, the sun quite literally sets on the history-making 2019 Tigers, and it will rise hours later on a vastly different group (as it turns out, the coronavirus would shut down everything a week later). Three-fourths of LSU’s 2019 starters are gone, including 14 NFL draft picks; a handful of high-profile analysts left for full-time gigs; and two coordinators, Dave Aranda and Joe Brady, departed for big paydays.