LSU's Ed Orgeron called 'paranoid' over satellite camp drama

Some folks have a bone to pick with LSU coach Ed Orgeron.

As he prepares for his first full season as the Tigers coach, Orgeron has come under fire for trying to keep out-of-state schools from holding satellite camps in Louisiana.

Most recently, Belhaven University coach Hal Mumme, a former SEC coach at Kentucky, called Orgeron "paranoid" after Belhaven's scheduled joint camp with Texas, Cornell and several other schools this week in Louisiana had to be canceled because of Orgeron's stance.

"Paranoid Ed has kind of made it real plain that he was not going to allow any schools from outside of the state to come in there and look at their players," Mumme told Jeff Barker of Fox40 News on Wednesday. "He went around and did camps on their FCS campuses and wanted that to suffice. The problem with that is, of the 11 schools that play football in Louisiana, there's only one of them, Louisiana College, that's Division III. All the rest of them are D-I schools."

Mumme, whose Jackson, Miss., school plays in NCAA Division III, isn't the only coach upset with Orgeron. Apparently Texas and Michigan have had issues with Orgeron's making them to stay out of Louisiana.

The satellite camps are a way for students-athletes without the time or means to show off their talents to schools around the country without having to pay for travel. It's also a way for student-athletes who aren't on the radars of smaller schools to get a chance to play college football.

"You probably have 300 or 400 kids a year that are capable of playing football and not all of them can play in Division I, so they're not getting looked at," Mumme told Barker. "Like I said, we had Cornell coming from the Ivy League; that would've presented some opportunities there. If you live in Louisiana and you don't live on I-10 or I-20, you probably live in a place that's fairly hard to get to, and a lot of these schools that would've come to this camp are not going to go and find you.

However, many in-state schools are worried that bigger programs will woo their local athletes with promises of scholarships, which is likely where Orgeron's concerns lay.

Either way, Mumme said Thursday to 99.1 FM The Game in Birmingham, Ala., that he is going to turn Orgeron and LSU into the NCAA for "extortion."

"I think the NCAA needs to come in and look at that," Mumme said Thursday. "I don't see how a public figure at an SEC school can basically extort people into not using their facilities for the public good."