ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) – Jordan Jefferson and the LSU Tigers will be back at Cowboys Stadium in eight months for their 2011 season opener. They are now waiting to see if coach Les Miles will be with them.
“We trust Les Miles and we trust his word,” Jefferson said after the Tigers won the 75th Cotton Bowl on Friday night. “His word was he’s not going anywhere and he’ll be our coach next year.”
Yet, the 11th-ranked Tigers’ 41-24 victory over No. 18 Texas A&M still might have been Miles’ farewell to the Bayou.
While Miles said after the game that he hadn’t yet been contacted about the coaching vacancy at Michigan, he is expected to be a leading candidate at the school where he played on two Big Ten championship teams for coach Bo Schembechler. He was later an assistant coach for 10 seasons over two stints there.
“I don’t want to talk about me. This is really about LSU,” Miles said. “I told (the players) I have not had any conversations with Michigan at this point. And if I did, I would communicate with them very effectively.”
Amid the uncertainty of Miles’ future, and after the Aggies (9-4) jumped out to a quick 10-0 lead, Jefferson threw three touchdown passes to Terrence Toliver and ran for a score.
LSU (11-2) completed its fourth season with at least 11 wins in six years under Miles, who is 62-17 with a national championship. The Tigers had only two 11-win seasons in their history before that.
Surrounded by his players during the postgame celebration, Miles loudly and proudly sang the school fight song and savored the Tigers’ first Cotton Bowl victory in 45 years.
When asked then if he’d be back next season, there was an extended pause before Miles responded, “It’s a wonderful place. I love it here.”
It was the 50th game between the border-state schools, but the first since the 1995 opener. Texas A&M had won the past five games in a series that likely will not be renewed in the regular season any time soon.
Coryell Judie had a 69-yard kickoff return and an interception to set up Texas A&M’s two scores in the first 10 minutes. But that wasn’t enough to extend a six-game winning streak that included victories over Big 12 division winners Oklahoma and Nebraska, along with archrival Texas.
“When you don’t finish it off like we wanted to finish it off, there’s great disappointment,” coach Mike Sherman said. “At the same time, when you look at the body of work that the guys put in this year collectively, the stretch run that they had, I think we’ll be able to bounce back from this.”
The Aggies have lost five consecutive bowl games and nine of 10 – a streak that began with a loss to UCLA in the 1998 Cotton Bowl.
Jefferson was 10 of 19 for 158 yards with scoring passes of 42, 2 and 41 yards to Toliver, who had only two TD catches in the regular season. Jefferson’s only interception set up an A&M field goal in the first quarter.
LSU went ahead for good when Stevan Ridley had a 17-yard TD run, jumping over a defender near the line and then running untouched to the right edge of the end zone for a 21-17 lead with 4:43 left in the first half.
Uzoma Nwachukwu had two TD catches for the Aggies to match his regular-season total. He caught a 6-yarder from Ryan Tannehill and a 14-yarder from running back Cyrus Gray, who also had his seventh consecutive 100-yard rushing game – 100 yards on 20 carries.
Miles was also considered a top candidate for the Michigan job three years ago, during LSU’s national championship season.
In an unusual pregame news conference before the 2007 Southeastern Conference championship game, Miles expressed his intention to stay at LSU and later signed a contract extension through 2012. Michigan eventually hired Rich Rodriguez, who was 15-22 when he was fired this week.
There was no public pregame talk from Miles before the Cotton Bowl on Friday, after Stanford coach and former Michigan quarterback Jim Harbaugh agreed to a five-year deal to go to the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers.
Harbaugh had appeared to be at the top of a short list with Miles and San Diego State coach Brady Hoke, also a former Wolverines assistant, as candidates to replace Rodriguez.
Regardless of what Miles does, LSU returns to Cowboys Stadium the first weekend in September to play Oregon, which faces Auburn for the BCS national championship on Monday night.
Ridley, who wasn’t sure he’d even get to play until the NCAA reinstated him this week after an unspecified “one-time” academic violation, ran 24 times for 105 yards. Spencer Ware had 102 yards rushing on 10 carries as LSU got its first Cotton Bowl win since beating Arkansas 14-7 in the 1966 game.
Tannehill, who had been 5-0 since taking over as the Aggies starting quarterback, threw two interceptions in a span of three throws late in the first half – after 127 consecutive attempts without a pick. Eric Reid returned the second one 34 yards to the 2, setting up Jefferson’s short TD pass to Toliver for a 28-17 halftime lead.
“I feel bad for my teammates. … Kind of dropped the ball. It’s a tough feeling,” said Tannehill, who was 22 of 35 for 204 yards with three interceptions and two TDs. “You never want to do that to the guys you love and the guys you work so hard with.”
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