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Nothing stamps a college football program with an identity more than how its administrators handle hirings and firings. What LSU, Texas and Oregon said about themselves in the past week speaks volumes, and not in flattering tones.At LSU, public support and the wishes of the locker room dictated the decision of the administration to hire a coach.At Texas, public support and the wishes of the locker room failed to sway the decision of the administration to fire a coach.And at Oregon, where loyalty has been prized for more than three decades, the administration took the final, graceless step to illustrate that it no longer wants to be the Little School That Could. The Ducks no longer do it their own way. They acted just like everyone else does in this win-now world.Laissez les bon temps rouler in Baton Rouge. Ed Orgeron got the job, and we all know how well the Peoples Choice worked out for LSU a year ago. Public demand extended the LSU career of Les Miles for an entire four games into this season. Thats when the ardor of the fan base cooled enough for the administration to extract him without burning itself.Coach O is the new Peoples Choice, and he has made residents of Louisiana feel good again, being one of their own, with that Cajun-dipped voice somewhere between a growl and a diesel engine.That warm feeling well may last beyond four games into next season. But it is apparent that LSU hired Orgeron without regard for history -- his own, and the rest of major college footballs since the 1960s.Its entirely possible Ive missed someone. But Ive identified only 19 Power 5 schools in the past 50 years that hired a head coach who had been fired or forced out by another Power 5 school. Of those 19 coaches, one won a national championship. One won a conference championship. They are the same man, Gene Stallings, in the same season, 1992, at Alabama. Thats it.Only one coach won more than one division championship at his second-chance school. Yep, Stallings, who won four SEC West titles in seven seasons with the Crimson Tide.Only five of the 19 have or had a higher winning percentage at their second-chance school than the one that fired them. Only two of them finished with a winning record at the second school: Stallings and Paul Hackett, who went 19-18 in three seasons at USC and was fired for, yep, not winning enough.To be fair, the late Dennis Green turned around Stanford in three seasons before he left for the NFL, and Mike Leach has done the same in five seasons at Washington State. But LSU isnt asking Orgeron to win. Hell, Miles was winning. LSU expects Orgeron to win championships.And the majority of schools who hired these second-chance coaches are the schools that never win championships. But that just supports the point that LSU has colored outside the lines here. They didnt go out and hire a proven winner, the way that schools in the upper echelon of college football typically do.LSU expects Orgeron not to be the same coach who went 10-25 at Ole Miss from 2005 to 07. The Tigers want the Orgeron who went 6-2 as an interim coach at USC in 2013 and the Orgeron who went 5-2 this season. Although if he loses to rivals as he did with the Trojans (Notre Dame and UCLA) and this season with the Tigers (Alabama and Florida), they wont want Orgeron for long.Maybe Orgeron will be another Stallings, who entered into the perfect second marriage of coach and school. Stallings had been fired by Texas A&M in 1971, and fired again by the Phoenix Cardinals only weeks before Alabama hired him.If Orgeron cant win championships, he will discover that support among the fans and in the locker room is a foundation of Kleenex. All he need do is look west to Austin to Charlie Strong, a warm, compassionate man in a sport that is neither.Its hard to recall a coach who won over the public and the players without winning games in the way that Strong did. They wanted him to succeed, even as he went 16-21 in three seasons. If Texas had announced that Strong would coach the Longhorns in 2017, the public would have supported the decision.It may have been the force of Strongs personality, unfailingly polite and positive and straightforward as the Longhorns continued to disappoint.The Longhorns may have been young. They may have been tight, desperate to play well to save their coach. But what they were not in the last month of the season was very good. They couldnt shed blocks. They missed tackles. They couldnt create space at the goal line for DOnta Foreman, the biggest, most prolific running back in the FBS this season.Strong failed to hire the right assistants, judging by the way he kept replacing them. As much as Texas and its Orangebloods wanted Strong to succeed, Texas couldnt give Strong another chance. It couldnt, because its Texas.Texas loves saying, Were Texas, as if that means something in college football. What it means over the past 46 seasons is a school with the same number of national championships as BYU and Georgia Tech.In the end, Strong won some, but not enough. That will get him a second chance, perhaps even at a Power 5 school. So will Mark Helfrich, whose firing by Oregon on Tuesday night signaled the end of an era.Loyalty at Oregon not only has been a virtue but a trumpeted virtue. The university has been proud of how it treats its coaches. Rich Brooks won two games in his fifth season with the Ducks. He won two games in his sixth season. Brooks took Oregon to the Rose Bowl in his 18th season.Five assistants on the Oregon staff have been there at least 10 seasons, three for more than 20. We are different, Oregon said. We found good people and we stuck with them and look what it has done for us.Only Oregon didnt stick with Helfrich. Two years ago, Helfrich led the Ducks to the College Football Playoff National Championship game. Yes, the defense has stunk in the past two years, and this year the offense didnt play well enough to cover for it. Yes, Oregon lost the Civil War for the first time since 2007. Yes, the fans ended a 110-game sellout streak.So when times got tough, Oregon bailed on Helfrich. It chose the big-hitters way. Oregon threw money at the problem. It will pay Helfrich $11.6 million to take a hike. Thats not who Oregon has been. But thats who Oregon thinks it is now. The Ducks lost a head coach, and they lost their identity. That just may be harder to recover from than going 4-8. Drew Brees Jersey .C. -- Todd Fiddler scored a hat trick, including the overtime goal, as the Prince George Cougars survived an 8-7 win against the Kamloops Blazers in Western Hockey League play Sunday. 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STARKVILLE, Miss. -- Andy Cannizaro, a former Major Leaguer and one of the rising coaching stars in college baseball, has been named Mississippi States 17th head baseball coach, Director of Athletics John Cohen announced Saturday.We are thrilled to welcome Andy to the Mississippi State baseball family, Cohen said. When you look at all of the characteristics we need in a baseball coach at Mississippi State, Andy is the perfect fit. He has an outstanding resume as a recruiter and scout in evaluating and developing talent. Hes been around some of the best minds in all of baseball during his college and professional career. His personality and knowledge of the game will benefit our players.Cannizaro will be formally introduced at a 3 p.m. press conference Monday in the Bryce Griffis Boardroom at the Palmeiro Center. The public is welcome to attend. It will be streamed live on SEC Network+ via WatchESPN.com and the Watch ESPN app.Cannizaro has excelled in identifying talent at every stop of his career, including six years as a scout for the New York Yankees and two years as a Southeastern Conference assistant coach. Seven of the players he drafted for the Yankees from 2010-14 reached the Major Leagues, including Bulldog greats Jacob Lindgren and Jonathan Holder.I am extremely honored and humbled by the opportunity to become the head baseball coach at Mississippi State and would like to thank President Keenum and John Cohen for trusting me to continue the success of this historic program into the future, Cannizaro said. My family and I could not be more excited to become a part of the Starkville community. Our team and our staff understand the tradition and pride in Mississippi State baseball and will be relentless in our pursuit of our first national championship.The 37-year-old arrived in Starkville after serving as hitting coach and recruiting coordinator at LSU under head coach Paul Mainieri since July 2014. Cannizaro made a tremendous impact in two seasons with a dynamic ability to develop hitters and an aggressive base running prowess. He coached six Tiger batters to All-America recognition and 11 hitters were drafted. Five were selected in the first five rounds.One of his top protégés, Alex Bregman, became the highest drafted batter in LSU history, going No. 2 overall to the Houston Astros in the 2015 MLB Draft. It took Bregman, a two-time All-American and Golden Spikes Award finalist, just one year to reach the Big Leagues.In 2015, Cannizaro made an immediate impact as the Tigers finished among the NCAAs top seven in five different offensive categories. LSU led the nation in base hits (762), while finishing third in stolen bases (130), third in doubles (146), fourth in batting average (.314) and seventh in runs scored (451). The total stolen bases were the most by the program in 28 yeaars since the 1987 club tallied a school-record 156.dddddddddddd He helped guide LSU to an SEC championship and the 2015 College World Series. Seven of Cannizaros hitters were drafted that year, including Bregman.Cannizaros leadership during the 2016 campaign might have been his finest work. Despite losing eight starters from their prolific lineup of 2015, the Tigers still managed to boast one of the SECs top offenses. LSU finished the year ranked first in the SEC in stolen bases (95), second in runs (426), second in triples (21), third in scoring (6.5), third in on-base percentage (0.385) and third in slugging percentage (0.422). The Tigers reached an NCAA Super Regional and four players were selected in the 2016 MLB Draft.A record-breaking base stealer as a player, Cannizaros aggressiveness on the base paths has carried over into his coaching career. Since 2015, no SEC team has stolen more bases than the Tigers (225). That two-year total is 31 better than the SECs next closest, Vanderbilt (194).Before his time at LSU, Cannizaro worked as a Yankees scout from 2009 through 2014, evaluating and recruiting amateur players in preparation for the annual MLB Draft. He was the Yankees official representative at the 2013 and 2014 MLB Drafts. He also worked as the advance scout for the team as it prepared for the 2011 and 2012 playoffs.Cannizaro was the Yankees seventh-round selection in the 2001 MLB Draft, and he played in the organization for seven seasons, reaching the Major League level in September 2006. He joined the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008 and was on the clubs big-league roster for the first two months of the season. He later played for the AAA affiliates of the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox before retiring from the game in September 2009.During his Major League career, Cannizaro played and learned under Hall of Famer Joe Torre and World Series champion Joe Maddon.Cannizaro, a four-year starter at shortstop for Tulane (1998-2001), led the 2001 Green Wave squad to the first College World Series appearance in school history, batting a remarkable .395 with 118 hits, 34 doubles, 70 RBI and 52 stolen bases.A two-time all-America and three-time all-Conference USA performer, Cannizaro is Tulanes all-time leader in games played (248), at-bats (1,030), hits (350), doubles (85) and stolen bases (128). He was inducted in 2007 into the Tulane Athletics Hall of Fame. Cannizaro remains the C-USA all-time leader in career hits and career stolen bases.A native of Mandeville, La., Cannizaro graduated from Tulane in December 2001 with a bachelor of arts in sociology/business minor.He and his wife, Allison, are the parents of two children, Gabrielle (6) and Pierce (3). ' ' '