BATON ROUGE, La. -- Les Miles turned down an offer to coach at his alma mater, Michigan, in 2011, according to former LSU?athletic director Skip Bertman.Les Miles turned that job down for more money at Michigan. He turned it down, Bertman said Wednesday during a two-hour interview on the Sports Today radio show on Baton Rouges ESPN Radio affiliate, 104.5 FM. He would never say that because hes a very humble guy. But I was there; he turned it down.Will-he-or-wont-he Michigan rumors surrounded Miles LSU tenure for many years, with his name popping up each time the Wolverines had a coaching vacancy. Miles famously denied interest in the job at an impromptu news conference before the 2007 SEC championship game, and he remained at LSU for 11-plus seasons through his firing on Sunday.Then-Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon -- previously the CEO of Dominos Pizza -- indicated at the time that he opposed hiring Miles, but Bertman reiterated that Miles truly could have returned to Ann Arbor, where he played and coached under the legendary Bo Schembechler.I swear to God thats true. He turned it down, Bertman said. LSU had just given him this new contract, and the president of Dominos Pizza flew down on a Dominos plane and offered him [the Michigan job], and he says, Youve got to tell me tonight, Les, because if you dont say yes, Im going to get Brady Hoke. And sure enough, he took off and the next day you read in the paper that he hired Brady Hoke.The Miles-Michigan connections were among the subjects Bertman covered in a wide-ranging interview that offered insight into his seven years as LSUs athletic director -- a period that included Nick Sabans time as football coach in Baton Rouge and Bertmans 2004 search to find Sabans replacement. Bertmans account was particularly relevant, given that LSU is now in the middle of another coaching search, and names such as former LSU offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher and even Saban himself are being floated.When Saban arrived at LSU in 2000, he was not the coaching heavyweight he is today. Bertman called Saban LSUs miracle man for turning an underperforming Tigers program into the 2003 BCS champion.Bertman said the Miami Dolphins offer to Saban in 2004 was too lucrative for LSU to match, and the coach departed for the NFL despite not wanting to leave LSU.I went to Nick and we spoke and I said, Look at Bobby Petrino, Steve Spurrier, Lou Holtz, said Bertman, who won five NCAA titles as LSUs baseball coach. I gave him all the coaches. I said, I could never do Major League Baseball, because Im a screamer like you are. ... I tried my best. You know what he said? He said, If I dont take this offer, Ill never get another one, because this is the best offer ever given to a college football coach. Although Bertman said he is fond of Saban and his wife, Terry, he admits Saban was not the easiest person to work with. That made the sunnier Miles, who had a young family when Bertman hired him in late 2004, a stark change of pace.[Saban] deserves a lot of credit in his five years. He did what we asked him to do, and we did what he asked us to do, and he asks a lot, Bertman said. I would say at the end of five years, he can wear you down. At the end of five years, I knew exactly what was going to happen: I couldnt get another guy like Saban. That wasnt going to happen. But I needed a guy that had the maturity to [ignore] where somebody says, Hes not Saban, and [Miles] handled it.?And Les is a wonderful family guy, hes got a lot of maturity, hes got great character. And no, he didnt change the offense, OK, enough to make those people happy. On the other hand, he did do a wonderful job for 12 years.Bertman rattled off a long list of candidates that LSU considered in some capacity when Saban left for the Dolphins:* Louisville coach Bobby Petrino rubbed him the wrong way.* Bertman liked the idea of hiring Steve Spurrier if Saban left, but Spurrier was impatient and accepted the South Carolina?job in November, a month before Bertman hired Miles.* Virginia Tech?coach Frank Beamer did not seem interested in the job.* President George H.W. Bush personally called to vouch for ex-Texas A&M?coach R.C. Slocum, but Bertman didnt consider him a viable candidate.Other possibilities he mentioned included Houston Nutt, Rich Rodriguez, Bobby Williams and Jack Del Rio. In fact, Bertman said he finally sold LSU search committee members on Miles while they sat waiting for Del Rio to gain permission from Jacksonville Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver to even speak with LSU.I said, Lets drop the football for just a second and lets just take character, so we dont have an incident or a scandal like theyve had at Alabama and Arkansas and many other places, Bertman said. In other words, Gary Barnett had just been in this scandal, and I said, This guys not going to run away with a cheerleader, and couple other examples that I used. Well, everybody liked that. I said, This guys promised me that hes going to graduate players. Hes going to discipline those that [misbehave]. So I had a chance to speak for him.Bertman said he angered Fisher, who was LSUs offensive coordinator at the time, by not interviewing him to replace Saban because he wanted a candidate with head-coaching experience. However, he remains fond of Fisher and said, If they can get him to come back, its worth every penny.Bertman strongly advised Miles to retain Fisher as his offensive coordinator in 2005, although he now believes that was an error in judgment. Fisher worked under Miles for two seasons before leaving to become Florida States offensive coordinator and, later, head-coach-in-waiting, after the 2006 season.It didnt work well because they were two offensive guys that had different offensive philosophies, which was my mistake, Bertman said.As for LSUs job opening, Bertman expressed doubt that athletic director Joe Alleva could lure heavyweights such as Saban, Fisher, Ohio States Urban Meyer or Michigans Jim Harbaugh to the school.He said, though, that LSU will almost certainly aim for a sitting head coach, adding that it would be complicated to pursue a coach such as Houstons Tom Herman or any other prospective candidate with so much time left in the season.Im certainly not second-guessing this move -- Im for whatever LSU does -- but in this case, Joe will make his own decision based on the people who are available, Bertman said. Now, you may not know, I may not know, who all those people are because they dont want their names out there. So if Tom Herman is the guy, he doesnt want to hurt the Houston backing by saying, Im looking for this, and then not get the job and go back. So its a very hard thing to do. Fake Jerseys . Brazilian national coach Luiz Felipe Scolari has confirmed that the veteran goalkeeper is set to join Toronto on loan, saying it will help him be ready for the World Cup. Replica Jerseys . Brett Kulak and Jackson Houck of the Vancouver Giants were each charged with assault causing bodily harm on Aug. 18, according to the B.C. court services. https://www.fakejerseys.us.com/ . Klitschkos management company says the bout will be the Ukrainian fighters 25th world championship fight. The 1.83-meter (6-foot) Leapai defeated the previously unbeaten Denis Boytsov in November to become the WBOs mandatory challenger. Fake Jerseys From China . -- Aaron Murray threw for 408 yards and three touchdowns, ran for another score, and led No. Fake Hockey Jerseys . Calgary scored on the first shift, and Michael Cammalleri scored twice as the Flames cruised to a 5-2 win over the Washington Capitals on Saturday. Only a few weeks ago, at a village ground a hundred miles north of London, via a round journey that for most of my away team would total five hours, including tube, train and motorway transit, I conspired with the captain to fix a game.Yes, this is a confession, of sorts. If I were a professional I might find the ICC anti-corruption SWAT team kicking down my door. But the world of weekend club cricket is a different animal. The gentle English Sunday fixture, where players might have argued with their wives for an afternoon on the pitch - there are certainly those among my own playing brethren who carefully negotiate between divorce and cricket - isnt to be wasted by bowling the opposition out for 50, or watching one of your team-mates rack up a double-hundred while the rest of the batsmen sit in their pads and mutter obscenities. Especially after a long drive into the wilds beyond Watford Gap, where southerners, particularly those who live within the bubble of the M25, seem to think that venturing north in the UK is akin to embarking on a polar expedition.This is friendly cricket, where the aim is a staged performance rather than a win. And not a show where one star bats and bowls a team to victory. There are no bonus points for demolishing the opposition - at least not when they are batting first - and only the players who prefer a pint of beer to a spell at the wicket want the game over before a queue forms at the bar. Unlike any other sport I can think of, opposing captains will come together and discuss how they can make a game of it. They are choreographers rather than captains. In social cricket the show must be a chorus line rather than a grand soliloquy. Everyone has to do something to feel part of the performance, and the stratagems to get all involved require the cunning of a Test match general.Therefore, in that game at the end of the motorway a few weeks ago, the opposition batting collapse was unwelcome improv. Each wicket we took received less and less applause, especially from the car-owning batsmen who were hoping for some sort of total to get stuck into and justify their petrol bill. So when the score was 60-odd for 7, with the change bowlers whod been brought on to give away runs actually taking bloody wickets, I asked for a bowl. Bowling to be hit rather than to hit the stumps, I discovered, isnt as easy as Id thought. The game would be a farce if I lobbed up full tosses, so the delivery needed to look authentic yet be nothing more benign than a wide half-volley or a juicy long hop..dddddddddddd. I ended up going for two fours in the over, and found myself feeling pretty pleased with my efforts, apart from one horrifying moment when a ball that swung late threatened to bowl the batsman middle peg. He jammed the blade on it, fortunately, and I sighed with relief that my yorker didnt castle him.Not that dross bowling guarantees runs. For the sake of raising money for a good cause I occasionally play in charity cricket games. These matches are an odd mix of ex pros and non-playing celebrities. One over, Devon Malcolm is tickling your chin with bouncers, and the next youre facing an actor and having to skip down the wicket to hockey-slap a ball thats dribbling towards third man. When my lift to one of these gala matches was from a TV presenter on the opposition, an athlete, I should note - in case he reads this and recognises himself - but not a coached cricketer, we made plans before he went out to bat how I should bowl at him. The first six balls would be: two wide of off stump to get a feel of the track, followed by two long hops and two half-volleys.He left the first two, cracked the first long hop directly into midwickets hands and was dropped. He hit the second long hop for four, and was bowled by the first half-volley. The plan sort of worked, I suppose, as I still got a lift home after the game.The fact is that whatever you might try and do to help the batsmen to runs, the multiple ways available to be out in cricket are not on your side. As I found out that Sunday when we tried to be generous. A wide ball got dragged on, and then the ringer in our team got a full bunger creamed straight into his meaty palms at cover. He was too good to be dropping catches. The final wicket fell just as the opposition crawled over a hundred, when one of our very occasional bowlers took a diving caught and bowled. It was a brilliant pouch. On any other day hed have been high-fived and feted. Instead he was sworn at. His defence for taking the wicket was, I thought it was a bump ball. We scowled at him and slouched off the pitch as he failed to talk the umpire out of the decision.We knocked off their total in half the allotted overs, and the game finished early, meaning many of us got home sooner than expected that Sunday evening. Time enough to help out with the housework, perhaps do some ironing. If wed bowled badly better, we wouldnt have got back till midnight. ' ' '