No. 1 LSU visits Ole Miss on Saturday night.

It’s Ed Orgeron’s team facing the program with which he got his first opportunity as a head coach.

It’s still hard to believe that Orgeron ever got here from there.

But one thing’s for sure – he wouldn’t be where he is now if not for what happened there.

Orgeron had a terrible 3-year tenure as the Rebels’ head coach, winning just 3 SEC games, none in his final season.

This isn’t the NFL or the NBA or Major League Baseball, where being a head coach practically guarantees you at least one more opportunity no matter how badly you do in your first opportunity.

This is college football, where disastrous first tenures as a head coach are rarely followed by subsequent head-coach tenures – at least not with programs of comparable stature.

But Orgeron failed as a head coach in the SEC and got another crack at being a head coach in the SEC.

It took some fortuitous events along the way – as well as some serious introspection and bold reaction to what that introspection revealed.

To realize how improbable it was for Orgeron to get from there to here first requires an understanding of just how bad it was there – in Oxford.

It wasn’t like Orgeron was building a program step by step and took one step backward, allowing impatient alumni to run him off, as sometimes happens with young, first-time head coaches. Heck, he wasn’t even young, at least not by first-time college football head coach standards.

He was 44 when he coached his first game as a head coach. Hardly Methuselah, but not exactly a wunderkind either.

He wasn’t taking over a disastrous situation. He replaced David Cutcliffe after a 4-7 season, the first losing record for Ole Miss in eight years, thanks to Tommy Tuberville, Cutcliffe and Eli Manning.

But things got worse under Orgeron, who was hired primarily because of his proven ability to recruit. His Rebels teams went 3-8, 4-8 and 3-9.

That’s 10-25. His SEC wins came against Kentucky, Vanderbilt and Mississippi State with the Egg Bowl triumph probably serving as the pinnacle of his tenure. His non-SEC wins came against Memphis (3 times), Northwestern State, his alma mater (twice), The Citadel and Louisiana Tech. His losses included 2 against Vanderbilt and home losses to Wyoming and Wake Forest.

Orgeron couldn’t handle the job of being a head coach.

He has said his biggest short-coming was approaching the head coaching position the way he had approached being a defensive line coach – trying to be hands on with everything.

The result was a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, kind of deal.

There was nothing in Orgeron’s job performance as head coach at Ole Miss that would suggest he was capable of handling a second opportunity.

But he could recruit. And he could coach defense.

Sean Payton hired Orgeron to coach the New Orleans Saints defensive line. After one season, Orgeron returned to college, to the SEC, becoming defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator at Tennessee.

One year later he took on added responsibilities and set foot on a path that would eventually guide him to another opportunity.

He became defensive coordinator, defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator at USC. Orgeron was in his 4th season with the Trojans when Steve Sarkisian was fired after a 3-2 start.

USC turned to Orgeron to be its interim coach, to stabilize a situation that needed short-term stabilization. No one was going to give him a lengthy contract to take over their program.

But he was just what the Trojans needed and the Trojans were just what he needed. USC went 6-2 under Orgeron, but he resigned when it became clear he wasn’t going to get the permanent job.

He landed at LSU as Les Miles’ defensive line coach, working with the program he had always dreamed of leading, with no indication he was ever going to lead it.

But in his second season with the Tigers, Miles was fired after a 2-2 start. LSU turned to Orgeron as USC did, hoping he could provide the stability he had given the Trojans and he did as LSU went 6-2 just as USC had.

The second successful stint as an interim head coach helped rehabilitate Orgeron’s image, but he was still a long shot to get that second real chance.

If either Jimbo Fisher or Tom Herman had wanted the LSU job half as much as Orgeron wanted it, they would have gotten it. But neither did – and Orgeron got the gig.

Along the way Orgeron had reflected on why he failed and failed so badly at Ole Miss. Nowadays, Mondays at LSU are called “Tell the Truth Mondays.” That’s when the coaches review the previous games with the players and tell the truth – being brutally honest about the blemishes of the most recent performance no matter how good or bad the outcome.

Orgeron had a few tell-the-truth days with himself. He figured out how to be a head coach and stopped acting like a position coach. He hired good people and trusted them to do their jobs.

He kept telling the truth – to his staff, to his players, to himself.

When the hiring of Matt Canada as offensive coordinator didn’t work out, he made a change after one season. He admitted that replacing Steve Ensminger with Canada was a mistake when he replaced Canada with Ensminger.

After last season he realized he was getting close to where he wanted to be with his offense but he wasn’t there yet. He hired Joe Brady off Payton’s staff to oversee the passing element of Ensminger’s offense.

Now Brady is the hottest young coach in college football. Joe Burrow is almost certain to win the Heisman Trophy. Orgeron is almost certainly going to lead the Tigers into the SEC Championship Game and quite possibly the College Football Playoff.

If Ed Orgeron didn’t already have his dream job he would be getting opportunities to see if it was out there.

“Ole Miss was a great opportunity for me,” Orgeron said this week. “It was my first job. It was in the SEC, I learned a lot of things. I learned how to do things, I learned how not to do things. I don’t like the results, but you know what, it prepared me for down the road.

“When you get your butt beat you’re going to learn how to get better. And I do believe that that job trained me for the job that we’re doing today. So I’m appreciative of it.”

He wouldn’t be on top of the college football world today if he hadn’t first bottomed out at Ole Miss.