Welcome To SEC’s 1st INTERIM BOWL As LSU And Arkansas Each Have Head Coaches In Between Jobs

By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor

Who says Saturday’s brunch kickoff between also-rans LSU (5-4, 2-4 Southeastern Conference) and Arkansas (1-7, 0-5 SEC) doesn’t mean beans.

This is the first-ever SEC Interim Bowl, it is believed at least, on Saturday (11:45 a.m., SEC Network) at Tiger Stadium.

So, was Brian Kelly fired for cause, fired without cause, or just be-CAUSE, which would be without cause, which IS what happened, regardless of LSU’s Causeway of Crap. Which LSU needs to Cut, if it wants Lane Kiffin, who sounded interested on Monday. https://t.co/7l3JHlIe02

— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) November 12, 2025

LSU head coach Frank Wilson replaced fired head coach Brian Kelly on an interim basis on Oct. 26 – the day after the Tigers lost, 49-25, to No. 3 Texas A&M to fall to 5-3 (2-3 SEC) and out of the College Football Playoffs for the fourth time in four seasons of Kelly. Wilson, 52, was LSU’s associate head coach and running backs coach under Kelly since 2022. He is 0-1 after a 20-9 loss at No. 4 Alabama last week in which his team looked very Kelly-like.

Meet the new boss … same as the old boss:https://t.co/aTttOhkiU5

— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) November 9, 2025

Arkansas head coach Bobby Petrino replaced fired head coach Sam Pittman on an interim basis on Sept. 28 – the day after the Razorbacks lost, 56-13, at No. 22 Notre Dame to fall to 2-3 (0-1 SEC) and to 14-29 overall in the SEC in Pittman’s sixth season. Petrino, 64, was Arkansas’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2024 and ’25. He is 0-4 with an impressive offense in losses to No. 12 Tennessee, 34-31, No. 4 Texas A&M, 45-42, Auburn, 33-24, and Mississippi State, 38-35.

“I didn’t think about that,” Wilson said when told he was coaching in the Interim Bowl at his press conference on Thursday night.

LSU QB Garrett Nussmeier aggravates previous injury at practice today, but probable for Arkansas:https://t.co/A0uPif9U48

— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) November 14, 2025

He does have a lot of other things on his mind – like finding the running game Kelly never could other than when he had Jayden Daniels, how to score a touchdown in the red zone, if his starting quarterback Garrett Nussmeier (abdomen re-injury) will be healthy enough to play well, and he’s trying to keep a recruiting class together and sign more recruits for the next coach without knowing whom LSU will hire.

“I don’t think it does,” Wilson said when asked how the interim dynamic impacts the game. “For us, we’re so conscientious of ourselves and the things we need to do. We have to take care of our business.”

Petrino, who has coached in something called the Belk Bowl and a TaxSlayer Bowl while he was Louisville’s head coach for the second time from 2014-18, had no comment on the Interim Bowl, as no one cared enough to ask him about it this week.

It is the first bowl game in Tiger Stadium since Western Kentucky (another Petrino coaching pit stop in 2013) beat New Hampshire, 14-3, on Dec. 6, 1975, in a Division II semifinal in the Grantland Rice Bowl. Wow, a bowl named after one of the greatest sportswriters ever.

In a side note, Tiger Rag executive editor Todd Horne, a hell of a writer himself, played in a youth football city championship game shortly before kickoff of that last Grantland Rice Bowl in 1975 in Tiger Stadium. So a future sportswriter played in a bowl game name after a sportswriter. How can that bowl not survive, and the Mayo Bowl, which replaced the Belk thing in Charlotte, North Carolina, does?

Information is sketchy on previous Interim Bowls nationally and in the SEC, but surely they had to have happened at least once or twice over the last 100 or so years.

There was that Big Ten Baggage Bowl back in 2023 between Michigan and Michigan State. Michigan had four interim coaches that season as head coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended for the first three games of the season for an NCAA violation then the last three for the scouting scandal. But he coached in the Michigan State game for a 49-0 win against interim Harlon Barnett, who had replaced the fired Mel Tucker (a former LSU assistant) over a sexual harassment case.

The SEC office quickly said it wasn’t looking anything up. “Nothing remotely we’d ever keep data on,” a spokesman told Tiger Rag.

Well, you’re no fun, especially since the SEC has only been around since 1933. And especially from a conference that keeps every imaginable statistic and the annual take in the millions and millions of dollars by itself and each program.

And, hey, this Interim Bowl is no more meaningless than the SEC Championship Game since the 12-team playoff started last year! Go look that up, pal!

LSU is a 5.5-point favorite to win the inaugural – maybe – Interim Bowl.

Neither coach is a favorite to get either head coaching job. Wilson was 19-29 in four seasons as Texas-San Antonio’s head coach from 2016-19 (13-19 Conference-USA) and 7-11 in two seasons at McNeese State in 2020 and ’21 (5-9 Southland Conference).

CAN FRANK WILSON FOLLOW IN ED ORGERON’S INTERIM STEPS?

The previous interim LSU football coach, Ed Orgeron, did get the job in 2015. But Orgeron was 6-2 (6-1 Pac-12) as USC’s interim head coach in 2013 after replacing the fired Lane Kiffin, who has been a very successful Ole Miss coach since 2021 and is up for the LSU and Florida jobs at the moment. Funny, Kiffin hosts Florida Saturday in the Scouting-Interim Bowl (6 p.m., ESPN) as he may be checking out his future players with the Gators, who are coached by interim Billy Gonzales, a former LSU assistant who replaced the fired Billy Napier.

Orgeron also had SEC experience. It was not very good at Ole Miss, but he improved at USC and immediately turned LSU around from 2-2 in 2016 after replacing the fired Les Miles and going 6-2 to finish 8-4 and get the job. Then he beat Louisville and Petrino, 29-9, in the Citrus Bowl. Three years later, Coach O was a 15-O national champion after signing Joe BurrOw the year before. Now, Orgeron is a possible candidate for the Arkansas job on a non-interim basis. He was an assistant strength coach there in 1986-87 under head coach Ken Hatfield.

Gosh, this all runs together.

NEW: Former LSU head coach Ed Orgeron has been in communication with Arkansas, @PeteNakos reports👀

He’s also a name to know in the Oregon State search.https://t.co/2GZP1CYjFV https://t.co/lXZphanEqg pic.twitter.com/blJjAM3tkw

— On3 (@On3sports) November 14, 2025

Petrino, always a premium play caller, was one of the hottest coaches in America while at Louisville the first time from 2003-06 and while at Arkansas the first time from 2008-11. That included a 21-5 (12-4 SEC) run in his last two seasons with the Razorbacks before getting fired clearly with real cause for off-the-field-on-the-motorbike issues with his mistress that he hired.

Still, Petrino has a better chance than Wilson, who also had off-field issues in his previous stop at LSU. But Petrino likely needs to win out over LSU, Texas and Missouri.

The Interim Bowl will be on the SEC Network, but if you are a YouTube subscriber, you will not get it. The SEC Network is affiliated with ABC and ESPN, which is embroiled in a cable carrier dispute with Disney, and ESPN’s family of networks have been taken off YouTube.

And that’s a shame, because this Interim Bowl may be made for TV as both teams have so-so defenses, so there should be a lot of points scored … on an interim basis.

At a television near you or not, this Interim Bowl thing may catch on soon, as coaches are getting fired during seasons more now than ever.

“I don’t believe I ever coached against another interim coach when I was an interim,” Orgeron told Tiger Rag Friday. “But the way things are going, it may become normal.”