LSU coach Les Miles watches his players run drills before a game against West Virginia on Sept. 25.  College-football fans may be obsessive, but they're not crazy. If they decide to come after the coach with a guillotine, basic civility states they usually first wait for his team to lose a game.  This season, you can kiss these rules goodbye.  Like perhaps no 5-0 coach before him, LSU's Les Miles has managed to win all of his games while simultaneously enraging his team's fans. It got so bad that after the team beat West Virginia on Sept. 25, LSU athletic director Joe Alleva felt it necessary to write a letter to fans before last week's home game against Tennessee. Its purpose: to plead with them not to boo. "[W]hen some among the crowd are vocally disapproving of our own players or coaches, it is detrimental on many levels," the letter said.  As LSU, ranked No. 12, prepares to play at No. 14 Florida on Saturday, the situation has gotten so toxic that Brian Fiegel, the proprietor of a popular LSU sports-fan website called TigerDroppings.com, pleaded with his readers Monday to stop posting messages about who should replace the coach. "If we lose to Florida, it's going to get ugly," Mr. Fiegel said.  How could a group of college-football fans have a reaction to their team that's so grossly disproportionate to its record? It may have something to do with the contrary nature of Louisiana, which wouldn't make anyone's list of the most coldly pragmatic states. "We have a very passionate fan base, and they're pretty sophisticated fans, but they're half psychotic," said Charles Weems, a former member of LSU's Board of Supervisors.  But the disgruntlement mainly stems from the team's shaky play this season—a problem that came to a head last weekend in Baton Rouge.  With less than a minute to play—and the clock running—LSU was at the Tennessee goal line, trailing by four. Rather than snapping a play, the Tigers stood around in total confusion as the clock nearly expired. Some players sprinted on and off the field, others stared at Mr. Miles and his staff for direction. If Tennessee, a woeful team the Tigers were supposed to beat handily, hadn't been whistled for having too many players on the field, which let LSU run one more play—a touchdown—the Tigers would have lost.  Political consultant James Carville, an LSU alumnus, said he'd had to miss the game because of a speech—and found out about it from a bunch of voice mails. "The word that was used in every message was 'embarrassing,' " Mr. Carville said. "If you're making all this money, what should never happen is screwing up the clock."  Despite the 2007 national title that Mr. Miles won, and his .789 winning percentage—the highest for any noninterim LSU coach in 100 years—many Tiger fans are convinced their coach is an incompetent manager who stumbles into success.  This partly stems from the coach's chronically odd performances at news conferences. An entire website is devoted to his often-rambling statements. (Example: "I look forward to the opportunity at very positive consequences beyond finishing the season strong.") As his record slipped in the past two seasons, his difficulty explaining his decisions has frustrated some fans.  Mr. Miles said on a teleconference this week that fans' disgust is understandable. "We're frustrated," he said. "Certainly there were some mistakes made [Saturday] that we don't want to make."  Southern states are famously devoted to their football schools, but Louisiana is unique in that there's only one major-conference team. Buddy Songy, a sports-radio host in the Baton Rouge area, described the Tigers' '07 national title as "God upstairs almost repaying what happened with the hurricane."  "Look," Mr. Songy continued. "This state is 49th in the country in everything that's important. You give them a top-10 team, they want to hold onto it. When you feed 'em filet mignon, they don't want to go back to red beans and rice."  After Mr. Miles's predecessor, Nick Saban, took the Tigers to the 2003 national title, the 56-year-old Mr. Miles, who'd had a 28-21 record at Oklahoma State, wasn't the sexiest hire. His predicament isn't completely unique. Some fans at Oklahoma and Michigan, both also 5-0, are pointing to their teams' suspect defenses and wondering if they have glass chins.  Still, the Tigers have finished in the top five of one of the polls three times in his five seasons—far better than some of his predecessors. "Les brings so many good things to the table," said Mr. Weems. "You only have to look back at the days of Curley Hallman and Gerry DiNardo to know how far we are removed from that kind of mediocrity."  Write to Darren Everson at darren.everson@wsj.com
Head football coach Les Miles has the LSU Tigers at 5-0. So why are the fans so miserable?