Sugar Bowl features a Six Degrees of Dave Aranda kind of deal

Dave Aranda is returning to the Superdome.

The last time he was there was January 13, 2020, when he was LSU’s associate head coach/defensive coordinator/linebackers coach as the Tigers defeated Clemson in the CFP Championship Game.

Now Aranda is in his second season as head coach of Baylor, which will face Ole Miss in the Allstate Sugar Bowl on Saturday night in the Caesars Superdome.

There is no CFP championship at stake this time, but it’s a significant game nonetheless. After all, it is the Sugar Bowl – and Aranda’s No. 7 and Big XII champion Bears (11-2, 7-2) and Lane Kiffin’s No. 8 Rebels (10-2, 6-2 SEC) are two of the faster-rising programs in college football.

“It’s going to be good to be in the Superdome,” Aranda said this week. “We’re anticipating a pretty lively environment there, and rightfully so.”

It won’t be quite as lively an environment as the one there when Joe Burrow was quarterbacking the Tigers offense and Aranda was coordinating the defense as Ed Orgeron’s team ands tens of thousands of their closest friends experienced the climax to the most dominant season in LSU football history.

This time Baylor and Ole Miss will both be trying to add a climactic win to one of their most memorable seasons in recent years as they play in the penultimate bowl game of this season – followed only by LSU versus Kansas State in the Texas Bowl on Tuesday night.

In fact the 88th edition of the Sugar Bowl is a sort of Six Degrees of Dave Aranda kind of deal.

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin (who’s also in his second season on the job), like Aranda, reportedly was considered as a candidate to replace Orgeron, who was bought out by the Tigers and coached his last game November 27.

Kiffin worked with Orgeron at both Tennessee and USC, just as Aranda did at LSU.

Monte Kiffin, who serves as an analyst for his son’s Rebel program, was Jim Mora’s defensive coordinator with the New Orleans Saints for the 1995 NFL season.

Aranda’s staff features other familiar names in Louisiana football.

One is Ron Roberts, who two years ago Aranda hired away from Louisiana-Lafayette, where he was defensive coordinator, to be his defensive coordinator/inside linebackers coach. The Ragin’ Cajuns defeated Marshall in the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl on December 18 in the same building where the Sugar Bowl will be played.

It was former Louisiana head coach Billy Napier, who hired Roberts away from his six-year tenure as head coach at Southeastern Louisiana.

Napier, who began his new job as head coach at Florida after leading the Cajuns to the Sun Belt Conference championship on December 4, seemed a logical candidate for LSU to interview before hiring Brian Kelly away from Notre Dame, though the Tigers felt otherwise.

But we digress.

Aranda’s offensive coordinator/tight ends coach is Jeff Grimes, who was the LSU offensive line coach/run game coordinator from 2014-17. Though their tenures in Baton Rouge overlapped for two seasons, Aranda and Grimes being on different sides of the ball, they didn’t “know each other all that well,” Grimes said.

But they did have “a very professional relationship,” Grimes said. “I had a great respect for him as a person and as a coach.”

Aranda and Roberts have known each other for about 20 years. Aranda served as co-defensive coordinator with Roberts when Roberts was Delta State head coach in 2007.

“It’s been a relationship that’s kind of been built off the fact that we’re both kind of football junkies, love talking, love studying the game,” Roberts said.

Baylor’s defensive line coach is Dennis Johnson, who was a lineman on LSU’s SEC championship team in 2011, served under Orgeron and Aranda as a Tigers defensive line assistant from 2016-18 and as an analyst in 2019.

By the way, this is just Baylor’s third appearance in the Sugar Bowl. (It’s Ole Miss’ 10th.)

The Bears were here just two years ago, losing to Georgia 26-14 at the end of a breakout season that landed Matt Rhule the head coaching job with the Carolina Panthers, leading to Baylor hiring Aranda.

Rhule quickly hired LSU passing game coordinator Joe Brady (a former Saints assistant) as his offensive coordinator, just days after Aranda, Brady and the Tigers won the CFP title.

Brady was fired earlier this season, but Rhule and the rest of the Panthers will be playing the Saints in – you guessed it, the Superdome – on Sunday, just about 16 hours after Aranda’s team finishes playing in the Sugar Bowl.