Can Les Miles, LSU football team play a role in healing Baton Rouge?

HOOVER, Ala. — Perhaps no college town in the SEC is looking forward to football season more than the one in Baton Rouge.

Alton Sterling was shot and killed by a Baton Rouge police officer last week, another tragedy involving a black man losing his life at the hands of white law enforcement. Social unrest in that community is getting scarier.

This week, Baton Rouge police foiled an attempt by four black men — well, three, as one was 13 years old — to target local cops with guns stolen from a pawn shop. This following what happened in Dallas, where a black man shot and killed white officers in retaliation for recent perceived injustices similar to that of Sterling.

LSU coach Les Miles put football aside for a moment upon being welcomed to the podium for SEC Media Days.

“The tragic events in the last weeks have certainly taken the national spotlight,” he said, “those areas, including Baton Rouge. We’ve had several meetings. We met with the entire staff, and it was not about our roles as coaches or staff, but more or less who we were as people, and I wanted to listen. And I felt like it improved our communications.

“I’ve had two small lead meetings with leadership of my team, and I’ve had a team meeting. I broke that team meeting up into position groups, and I felt like we brushed the surface of the issues. I don’t know that we got to the depth that we needed. I think that has to continue, certainly in our place.”

Credit Miles, now the senior coach in the SEC, for understanding that his job is more than winning games.

There is a presidential election coming down the pike this November. Each candidate is loved and hated by extremists on either side of the aisle — most of us fall in between. It’s a tough time to be an American.

Especially in Baton Rouge, where everyday life has become terrifying, people need to come together. There is so much dividing us. But once the season arrives, suddenly that community has figures to rally around: the Tigers. Especially the star players. Leonard Fournette is a god walking among everyday history majors.

RELATED: Day 4 from Hoover: LSU’s Leonard Fournette using his platform for change

Cliché or not, Miles believes that rebuilding a community is no different than rebuilding a football team.

“I feel like our society’s the same, and you need everybody,” he said. “If you look to see change, and if you watch the representation of our country on live TV, you realize that change is necessary. And it comes through all of us, everybody in the room — certainly me.

“It’s an inclusive. You reach for others. You need to be respectful of their life and their opinion and who they are. You need compassion for people. You build them up and you train them and you give them the best practices, and we change as a team and as a community and as a society.”

Seemingly every day, there is more evidence to suggest that the fabric of our society is about to unravel.

Credit: Butch Dill-USA TODAY Sports

Miles is not an NFL coach. Most of the players on his roster — kids, really — aren’t even old enough to buy alcohol legally. Not even in nearby New Orleans. They’re just figuring out who they are, what they want to be.

Needless to say, many of Miles’ players are young black men from disadvantaged backgrounds. Too often when they turn on their televisions or flip through their phones, they’re bombarded with stories of other young black men being attacked by the very institutions sworn to protect them. Confusion is a natural reaction.

Targeting police in retaliatory fashion isn’t the answer. However, nobody really knows what IS the answer.

“I help my guys in some way process emotion,” Miles said. “I don’t know that I’ve done a very good job. I don’t know that I personally have processed the emotion that I see when our country is displayed as it is.

“What I’d like to do is have them, our guys, have a platform where they could affect change. I think they’re wonderful men. I think they’re constantly involved in roles. They’re a student. They’re a football player. They’re role models. Society chases them. They want them at the party. They want them in front of the magazine. They want their autograph. And so then they’re constantly barraged with, ‘What’s the answer, what’s the answer, what’s the answer?'”

If people with much more life experience don’t know the answer, why would a 21-year-old running back?

We ask a crazy amount of student-athletes already — on and off the field. There have been talks here in Hoover about how to reduce their considerable workload and give them more free time. There’s very little.

Since they already pull double duty as students and athletes, expecting them to carve out a third role as community leaders doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem wise, either. With the reactionary nature of social media, a player is perhaps more likely to throw gas on the fire, not come running with a bucket of water.

When the microphone came to me, I asked Miles if college football players were equipped to be role models.

“I think there’s such a need for quality guys with great opportunities that can really display that ‘you can, too.’ I think the ‘you can, too’ is a magnificent piece to who they are. Asking them too much at times? You’re absolutely correct. I mean, a football player — he’s injured, he’s nicked. He’s got to get up early to go to treatment. He’s got to get up early and get to study. He’s got to stay up late to get the paper done. He’s got to do a bunch of stuff. There’s a bunch of stuff in academics.

“Then you say, by the way, Leonard, we need to talk to you Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, just in media. We’re not doing that again. We could, certainly, but we’re going to see if we can script a time where we can take some of that off of some of those guys.

“And then there’s a need in the community. But during the fall of the year, there’s also a need in the community for that team to win. And let’s see if we can do our part to do that: find the times, and they’re going to be rare, that we can do community outreach as a team.”

“Winning cures all.” It’s a popular pigskin adage. Perhaps it will help cure the city of Baton Rouge, too.

John Crist is the senior writer for Saturday Down South. You can send him an e-mail directly at jcrist@saturdaydownsouth.com or follow him on Twitter @SaturdayJC.