and ford. we go further, so you can. >> more people are planning to vote by mail this coming election than ever before. we've been looking into the use of tse ballots in a crucial swing state, and the partisan fight over whether they're safe and secure. think bush v. gore was complicated? >> when you have half of your voters vote by mail, you will not know the outcome on election night. ( ticking ) >> the very first line in your book is, "this is not the book that most people wanted me to write." >> people wanted me to write another tell-all about my time

in the trump administration. people wanted me to write another book about palace intrigue. i think what americans need today is a meaningful, a respectful discussion about these very serious challenges to our security, our prosperity, and our influence in the world. >> tonight, president trump's former national security advisor shares his experiences with all the trouble in the world. ( ticking ) >> the l.s.u. tigers are the reigning national champs. and this spring, they tied a modern-day record when 14 of their players were selected in the n.f.l. draft. >> all right, "60 minutes" is in the house, baby! >> as l.s.u. begins it's title defense, we asked the homegrown coach-- how about this for an accent... >> you ain't gonna corner me big boy. >> ...what he was doing to keep his team healthy and on the field in this soon-to-be sideways season. ( ticking ) >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bill whitaker. >> i'm anderson cooper. >> i'm jon wertheim.

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and the "zero copays means more money for rumba lessons" plan. find the right plan for you from unitedhealthcare. get medicare with more. >> bill whitaker: in a landmark ruling thursday, the pennsylvania supreme court made it easier for voters there to cast their ballots by mail. that could turn out to be one of the most consequential rulings this election year when voting by mail has sparked intense debate. president trump says voting by mail is harmful to our democracy and his election prospects. democrats say it allows more

voters to participate. in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, a third of registered voters told cbs news pollsters they plan to vote by mail; more than ever before. clashes over voting rules are raging in state courts and legislatures, perhaps nowhere more than pennsylvania, the perennial swing state, the first to allow limited mail in voting more than a century ago. we went to see how this battle for the ballot is playing out in the cradle of our democracy, philadelphia. what keeps you up at night? >> al schmidt: being an election administrator in one of the largest cities in the country, in one of the fewest swing states in the country. >> whitaker:: keeps you up at night? >> schmidt: it does. >> whitaker: al schmidt is one of three commissioners who run elections in philadelphia and the lone republican. >> schmidt: it's just that there's a lot more scrutiny with

this one. >> whitaker: at a public meeting two weeks ago, held in an openek warehouse to allow for social distancing, the commissioners weren't feeling a lot of brotherly love from voters. >> voters need to know. they want to vote-by mail, they don't know about dropboxes, they don't know about early voting, they don't know anything, it seems like this body can't help me? where can i go for assistance? so i'm just gonna get the deer in the headlights thing? is that how it works? somebody help me. >> whitaker: with the presidential election just weeks away the sad truth was al schmidt and his fellow commissioners couldn't offer much help... >> thank you for your comment. >> whitaker: ...because they didn't have the answers themselves: what was the deadline for requesting and returning mail in ballots? would there be dropboxes for voters to drop off their ballots? lawsuits and legislative wrangling kept those and other issues up in the air until just three days ago when the state supreme court ruling provided

some answers. because the postal service admits there will be mail delays, ballots arriving up to three days after election day will be counted. drop boxes are allowed. and a slightly relieved commissioner al schmidt can now get to work. >> schmidt: not only do we have vote by mail in pennsylvania now, which is pretty new, we have a whole series of election reforms that are new. we have voting technology that is pretty new. and it's taking place in this environment with the covid-19 concerns that have limited our ability to use polling places. there's all sorts of challenges all aligning for this election cycle. >> whitaker: the biggest challenge: voting by mail. a new election law allows every registered voter to mail in ballots. it was first rolled out for the june primary, as the pandemic raged, in the midst of racial

protests. it was a bumpy rollout. because of the virus the primary was postponed five weeks. the day before the election democratic governor tom wolf extended the deadline for some counties to return their ballots. despite the bumps, 175,000 philadelphians voted by mail. >> schmidt: we had just an extraordinary interest in mail- in voting. >> whitaker: did you notice a pattern as to who is choosing to vote by mail? >> schmidt: we did. philadelphia is roughly seven democrats for every one republican. when we took a look at who applied to vote by mail, that disparity was 17 to one, 17 democrats applied to vote by mail for every one republican who voted by mail. >> angelique hinton: vote like your life depends on it and your rights depend on it, 'cause they do. >> whitaker: angelique hinton is working to make sure the voices of philadelphia are heard in november. >> hinton: so if you fill this

out, then we can get this information to the commissioner's office. >> okay, thank you. >> whitaker: she's working for a non-profit non-partisan program to get out the vote, especially from young people and people of color. >> i'm just hesitant about the mail in. >> hinton: well as far as what are you nervous about, like mailing it in? >> yeah, will it count? >> whitaker: in the confusion of the june primary, almost 6,000 of philadelphia's mail in ballots were rejected because they arrived after the extended deadline. so hinton reminds voters to get their ballots in by election day. >> hinton: i'd make sure to get it in as early possible if you're going to use that process. >> whitaker: why do you think vote by mail has become such a contentious controversial issue? >> hinton: there have been a lot of people that have been disenfranchised. and so voting by mail just gives back a lot of people, you know, the ability to vote that maybe couldn't take off work or just-- for whatever reason couldn't get there to vote on one day out of the year.

and so this now provides an opportunity for so many more people to vote. and i think that that is scary to some people. >> trump: these mail-in ballots, these mail in ballots are a disgrace and they know it. >> whitaker: president trump has visited pennsylvania four times since june. in 2016, he lost the big cities of philadelphia and pittsburgh, but won the rural vote in a landslide and took the state by 44,000 votes, that's less than 1%. so far this year more than two million pennsylvanians have requested mail in ballots, more than two-thirds of them democrats. almost every time president trump campaigns in the state he rails against mail in ballots. >> trump: this is just a way to steal the election and everybody knows that because the only way they are going to win is by a rigged election. >> josh shapiro: pennsylvania is certainly ground zero in this presidential election. >> whitaker: democrat josh

shapiro is pennsylvania's attorney general. he's been fighting pennsylvania republicans and the trump campaign over mail-in ballots since june. he won the recent round in state supreme court but, in federal court, the president's lawyers are seeking to ban drop boxes and lift limits on poll watchers that have been in place since 1937. shapiro told us the behind the scenes legal battles are as tough as the political one between president trump and vice president joe biden playing out on center stage. how intense is this legal battle going on in pennsylvania? >> shapiro: incredibly intense and you're here at a time where the president and his enablers have gone to court to actually make it harder for people to vote, bill. they've actually gone to court to try and sow doubt in people's minds. and i'm in court right now beating back the attempts by the

trump administration and the trump campaign to make it harder for people to vote by mail. >> whitaker: shapiro says exhibit a: the president's repeated claim that there's massive fraud with vote by mail. it is the centerpiece of his federal lawsuit in pennsylvania. >> shapiro: and so we went to court and said, "hey, mr. president, put up or shut up. demonstrate that fraud that you keep talking about as the reason for trying to undermine the vote here in pennsylvania." and guess what? they didn't produce any fraud. >> whitaker: the federal court judge, a trump appointee, has asked the president's lawyers to show reason why this case should proceed. they're back in court this week. >> shapiro: they can make all the claims they want on twitter. they can make all the claims they want in the media, no disrespect. but ultimately when you make a claim in court you're bound to have to show proof, facts, and evidence. and they have failed to produce any type of meaningful proof

that demonstrates that there's this fraud or demonstrates that our statute is illegal here. >> whitaker: jake corman is the republican majority leader in the pennsylvania senate. he supports president trump. so you might be surprised by what the senator told us a week before the state supreme court decision. do you believe that voting by mail is safe and secure? >> jake corman: in the pennsylvania system, yes. >> whitaker: what do you think of the president's almost unrelenting criticism of vote by mail? >> corman: i'm not gonna speak for the president. that's-- that's, you know-- that's his job. my job is to make sure the pennsylvania system works. i think we are doing that. we have done that. >> whitaker: the pennsylvania republican party claims to be a champion of vote by mail. it overwhelmingly passed the republican dominated state legislature and was signed into law by the democratic governor in october 2019, well before the pandemic. the website of the

pennsylvania republican party calls mail-in-voting "safe" and" easy." when we spoke to senator corman, he called some of the rhetoric around mail in ballots noise. >> corman: there's a lot of noise coming from everywhere. i mean, for anyone to claim that it's not-- it's all on one side is just not paying attention. clearly, the president has the biggest microphone. all presidents have the biggest microphone. if you're an effective policy- maker, you got to-- you know, you listen to it to a point and then you got to tune it out. our job is to make sure this election comes off well and that people are confident in it. >> whitaker: but the tone and tenor of debate in the pennsylvania legislature this summer has not inspired confidence. republicans and democrats had been working together on legislation to fix kinks exposed in the june primary. but shortly after president trump started blasting voting by mail in the courts and on the campaign trail in pennsylvania, state republicans changed course and introduced amendments to the

legislation that mirrored the president's goals. >> malcolm kenyatta: if anybody has two eyes and two ears they know why this amendment is being moved. >> whitaker: democrats in the legislature, like representative malcolm kenyatta of philadelphia, felt blindsided and filed the case that ended up in the pennsylvania supreme court. they argued delays in mail delivery made drop boxes a necessity and regulations on poll watchers had been a check on voter intimidation for decades. >> kenyatta: allowing people to come from counties all across the commonwealth ino places like philadelphia will try to intimidate people from using their right to vote. we have seen these tactics before. that's why the voting rights act struck down a lot of these things. >> whitaker: when the dust settled, democrats won most of what they sought in the state supreme court last week. but after the ruling, senate majority leader corman told us he's now concerned about the security of mail in ballots and

that senate republicans are preparing to fight the decision all the way to the u.s. supreme court. attorney general shapiro says he'll defend the pennsylvania court ruling. >> shapiro: i will tell you that there's an extraordinary amount of hypocrisy that's going on right now within the republican party. donald trump and his family vote by mail. >> trump: now the good news is we have a lot of court cases. we have one in pennsylvania, you know that right? >> whitaker: the trump campaign, the g.o.p., democrats and interest groups continue battling in court in pennsylvania and most other states. >> trump: so we'll see what happens. >> whitaker: do you expect that there will be lawsuits that will continue on election day? >> shapiro: i can tell you my team and i, along with others around the country, are preparing for all kinds of outcomes. sadly we have to fear that we have a sitting president of the united states that may take legal action to try and stop certain legal votes from being counted.

>> whitaker: back in philadelphia, the election commission is taking over a larger space to process election ballots. republican al schmidt told us the state supreme court ruling provided some clarity to the election process, but didn't allay all his concerns. what most concerns you? >> schmidt: our republic depends on confidence in our electoral process. and there are a lot of voices across the spectrum that intentionally or unintentionally seem to be undermining that confidence. >> whitaker: but one thing he states with confidence: we all have to have patience this november. >> schmidt: when you have half of your voters vote by mail, when you have hundreds of thousands of votes to count, and you cannot begin counting them, or even opening the envelope that those ballots are in until election day, you will not know the outcome on election night. ( ticking )

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>> scott pelley: h.r. mcmaster was an eyewitness to the oval office tempest that forms president trump's foreign policy. mcmaster was national security advisor for 13 months beginning in 2017, and he brought a world of experience to the job. he graduated from west point, led troops in combat, served multiple tours in iraq and afghanistan. and, on the way to becoming an army three-star general, he earned a phd in history. mcmaster has written a new book called "battlegrounds."

the title refers to threats faced by the u.s. today and to skirmishes at the white house. the now retired general is a disciple of neither political party. he told us the last few presidents, not just president trump, have left the united states vulnerable in the eyes of those who would do us harm. how do our competitors view the united states today? >> h.r. mcmaster: i think our competitors view us as weak and divided. i think they see an opportunity. i think china thinks it's winning. you know, china sees an america that is divided against each other. they see an america that is reeling from a triple crisis of covid-19, of the recession associated with covid-19, and the civil unrest and racial division in the wake of the horrible murder of george floyd, and over issues of inequality of opportunity. and so, china is acting, i think, now much more aggressively because they think

it's time to do it. they have a window of opportunity to exploit our weaknesses and to come after us. i think russia feels the same way. i think other adversaries could feel the same way. >> pelley: the very first line in your book is, "this is not the book that most people wanted me to write." >> mcmaster: right. people wanted me to write another tell-all about my time in the trump administration. people wanted me to write another book about palace intrigue. i think what americans need today is we need-- we need-- a discussion-- a meaningful, a respectful discussion about these very serious challenges to our security, our prosperity, and our influence in the world. >> pelley: president trump called in mcmaster when his first national security advisor quit after 24 days. michael flynn had lied about negotiating with russia before mr. trump was inaugurated. the president offered mcmaster the job the first time they met. what did your friends and family

advise you? >> mcmaster: well, i got a wide range of viewpoints. many called and urged me to do it, and said, "here is an unconventional president who's needs your help." others urged me not to do it. and i think a lot of it was because of the, you know, the unconventional, disruptive, and as some would say, offensive nature of president trump. >> pelley: it was an easy decision? >> mcmaster: it was a very easy decision for me. >> pelley: his uniform changed but not his soldier's view-- confront our adversaries and support iraq and afghanistan as long as it takes to ensure their stability. but, as in all administrations, the west wing was riven by rivals. >> mcmaster: there is certainly one group of people there who are there to serve the elected president and to serve the country. i think there are other groups there though, as well, a second group that is there really, instead of providing options to the elected president, they

really want to advance their narrow agendas. and then i think there's a third group, and i think this is true probably of any administration, who cast themselves in the role of saving the country and maybe the world from the president. >> pelley: were you trying to save the world from the president? >> mcmaster: no. it was my duty to help the president come to his own decisions. >> pelley: decisions for a world of trouble principally-- russian disinformation and election meddling-- and repressive and aggressive china. what do we misunderstand about china? >> mcmaster: for the chinese communist party, they're driven really by two fundamental things. first of all, it's the fear of losing control. that's why they're obsessed with control. that's why you see them extending and tightening their exclusive grip on power with this orwellian technologically enabled surveillance police state. and they're also determined to achieve national rejuvenation, to take center stage in the world. >> pelley: is the rest of the 21st century essentially a cold war between the united states and china? >> mcmaster: it's a competition, for sure.

it doesn't replicate the cold war with the soviet union in an exact way, but it's a competition. >> pelley: how is it different? >> mcmaster: it's tougher, you know. it's tougher because our economies are intertwined in a way that gives tremendous coercive power to the chinese communist party. i describe their approach as co- option. co-opt us in with the lure of access to their market and short-term profits. and then coerce us. coerce us to adhere to their worldview and to make concessions that allow them to achieve competitive advantage against us. >> pelley: what do we misunderstand about russia? >> mcmaster: whereas china wants to harness its strength and create exclusionary areas of primacy and challenge america, russia knows it's too weak to do that. what putin wants to do is, he wants to drag all of us down, right? he wants to polarize us, pit us against each other, reduce our confidence in our democratic principles and institutions and processes. >> pelley: on afghanistan,

mcmaster convinced a reluctant president to send more troops. mcmaster says afghanistan became america's longest conflict because short-term, wishful thinking, led three presidents to fight one-year wars, 20 times over. >> mcmaster: we went in under this illusion that the war was gonna be fast, cheap, efficient. and then we turned our attention to the war in iraq. we kind of forgot about afghanistan. but, guess what, you know, our enemy didn't forget about it. and so, we have strategies and policies based on what we would prefer to do rather than what the situation demands. >> pelley: but in the end, mr. trump preferred to get out. after mcmaster left, the president abandoned the buildup. you must have come away from that experience thinking the president might make a decision, but it's not likely to stick. >> mcmaster: well, yeah, that's exactly what was my experience. >> pelley: mcmaster is critical of afghan peace talks that began

this month. mr. trump, in his view, is making too many concessions. you say in the book that the president cheapened the sacrifice of the 2,300 americans who have died in afghanistan so far. >> mcmaster: well, i think what he did with this new policy, is he, in effect, is partnering with the taliban against, in many ways, the afghan government. and so, i think that it's an unwise policy. and i think what we require in afghanistan is a sustained commitment to help the afghan government and help the afghan security forces continue to bear the brunt of this fight. >> pelley: which is critical, in mcmaster's view, to prevent another 9/11. >> mcmaster: terrorist organizations who pose a threat to us are stronger now than they were on september 10, 2001. those who perpetrated the mass murder attacks of 9/11 were the mujahideen-era alumni of the

resistance to soviet occupation in afghanistan. today, we are facing an al-qaeda and an isis alumni that is orders of magnitude greater than that mujahideen-era alumni ever was. and they also have access to much more destructive capabilities. >> pelley: the president says that he is drawing down our troops in afghanistan to about 5,000. and withdrawing 12,000 from germany. >> mcmaster: i think these are both big mistakes. i think they're mistakes because they're consistent with, i think, this sentiment that you see really across both political parties for retrenchment or withdrawal from complex problem sets overseas. >> pelley: people are tired of these wars. >> mcmaster: yeah, they're tired of the wars and we lack confidence. we lack confidence because we haven't had, i think, sound strategies and policies in place and americans are losing faith in these efforts. i don't blame them. >> pelley: as for the president, mcmaster told us foreign policy was not his favorite subject.

mcmaster would brief to the limits of mr. trump's attention, then watch him shoot from the hip. the president was speaking to reporters on air force one in late 2017. the president was asked about the russian cyber assault on the 2016 election. mr. trump said of russian president putin, "every time he sees me, he says, 'i didn't do that,' and i really believe that when he tells me that. he means it." what was your reaction after the president said that? >> mcmaster: well, my reaction was one of surprise, disappointment, disbelief. >> pelley: later the same day, the president went before cameras and said he didn't mean it. >> trump: i'm surprised that there's any conflict on this. what i said there is that i believe he believes that. >> pelley: did you have a hand in the president's retraction? >> mcmaster: i did, and others. we had a conversation with the president afterwards we said, "your answer to that question will be misconstrued as a complete denial of russian

meddling when we know it's incontrovertible. it's just, it's just a fact." >> pelley: mcmaster also sticks to facts on climate change. he foresees a world destabilized by fire, flood, thirst and hunger. >> mcmaster: what is so sad these days is that we are so engageysin partisan infighting against each other that we don't take the time just to inventory what we can agree on. can we agree that climate change is bad? yes. can we agree that it's man-made? yes. can we agree that we can do something about it? certainly, we can. >> pelley: the president says climate change is a hoax. >> mcmaster: well, it's not a hoax. it's not a hoax. >> pelley: as for the pandemic, mcmaster told us there was a national security pandemic plan but its first two components failed. >> mcmaster: the first of those was identify an epidemic at its source and contain it locally. well, thanks to the chinese communist party, its

obfuscation, its repression of the news of the virus we couldn't do that. the second part of that is mobilize a biomedical response. and i think what we see now is there are frailties in that response, supply chains that prioritized just-in-time delivery and efficiency instead of the stockpiles we needed. supply chains that were over- reliant on china from a p.p.e. perspective, the personal protective equipment, as well as pharmaceuticals. >> pelley: while managing threats to the nation, mcmaster could not master the threats to his job. he lasted 13 months-- his armor, pierced, in part, by a social media missile-hashtag fire mcmaster. >> pelley: who was behind #firemcmaster? >> mcmaster: well, it was-- it was a combination of-- of, i think, these sorts of people who saw me as an impediment to their agenda. and it was a campaign that started domestically, but then was reinforced by an adversary, reinforced by the kremlin.

>> pelley: the russians were behind #firemcmaster? >> mcmaster: they were full participants in it, but i don't think they started it. but-- but many people who operate, you know, in this sort of venomous, you know, social media environment and bloggers and the pseudo-media. they're the ones who initiated the campaign. >> pelley: a campaign joined ultimately by some in the white house who offered the three star general an incentive to leave the battlefield. >> pelley: there were people who wanted you to resign from the nsc and dangled a fourth star in front of you to get you to do it? >> mcmaster: yes, yeah. >> pelley: and you told them? >> mcmaster: no, thank you, i'm honored, but i intend to retire at the at the end of my, you know, tour of duty, whatever the end of that tour of duty is in the white house. >> pelley: his tour ended with a tweet-the president thanking mcmaster for his service. today, at age 58, the retired

general who did not have stars in his eyes is teaching at stanford. his book is long on policy, short on intrigue. mcmaster declined to exploit the fractures of the nation because our divisions, he advises, are the gravest threat to national security. >> mcmaster: we're in an environment where as we're at each other's throats, the world hasn't stopped. these challenges are to our security and our prosperity and our influence in the world, they're growing, i think, more severe while we're preoccupied with our own vitriolic partisan discourse. ( ticking ) so i kept it in. he started believing things that weren't true. i knew something was wrong... but i didn't say a word. during the course of their disease around 50% of people with parkinson's may experience hallucinations or delusions.

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( ticking ) >> jon wertheim: when ed orgeron was named head football coach of the louisiana state tigers in 2016, the local joke went like this: "it's about time the job went to someone who didn't speak with an accent." see, orgeron is a native cajun with a perpetually hoarse voice; born on the bayou, not far from baton rouge. coach o, as he's known, struck a chord with the l.s.u. fan base, first with his flavor and familiarity, and then by winning. the tigers are the reigning national champions. now comes the real challenge: defending a title amid a global pandemic. college football is in existential crisis. just this week, when the season would normally be well underway, major conferences were still debating whether and how to stage football this fall. a member of the southeastern conference, l.s.u. forges ahead. as the team deals with covid protocols and shifting lineups, we found orgeron making the most of this new reality. >> ed orgeron: big andy, what do

you say man? >> what's up coach? >> wertheim: five days a week, for one frenzied hour, ed orgeron works the phones inside the war room of l.s.u.'s football facility. >> say hi to coach o real quick. >> wertheim: the pandemic prevents top high school prospects from visiting campus... >> wertheim: ...but teams can now call recruits as often as they like. >> orgeron: hey, what y'all eating out there. >> wertheim: orgeron likes to call them a lot. >> orgeron: how's your mama doin'? best wide receiver in the country doin'? >> wertheim: this is a coach who made his name as much for his recruiting savvy as for his x's and o's. >> orgeron: and then you gonna come play for l.s.u. right? >> hopefully, yes sir. >> orgeron: what you mean hopefully? >> wertheim: this sports version of speed dating: at l.s.u. it's known as "power hour." >> orgeron: all right, you know we love you. >> wertheim: what's power hour? you're laughing. >> orgeron: i love power hour, man. you know, it's a lot of energy. man, and those phones are blowin' up, and i get to talk-- the other day, we-- in 30 minutes we talked to 31 recruits. >> wertheim: why is it important? >> orgeron: you know, it's constant contact with these

young people nowadays. before you could call 'em once a week, but if you don't call 'em every day, if you don't text 'em every day, you don't send 'em a message every day, sometimes two or three times a day, they'll think you ( bleep ) you forgot 'em. >> wertheim: if someone says no? what's your-- what's your play-- >> orgeron: i'm gonna find a way. no, not today. but i'm gonna find a way. >> wertheim: you're gonna get that kid to l.s.u? >> orgeron: he's gonna have to tell me no about a thousand times. one time ain't enough. >> wertheim: you might call 2019, the "year of yes" for louisiana state. the tigers capped an undefeated season by winning the national championship. their quarterback joe burrow won the heisman trophy; another tiger took home the award for best receiver; that's ja'marr chase. in april, nfl teams drafted 14 players from l.s.u.- tying a modern record for one school. but for all the talent coursing through baton rouge. the sun here rises and sets with coach o. he didn't get much of a victory lap, unless you count 5:00 a.m. rides to work, radio blaring. two months after l.s.u.'s gilded

season, covid hit and orgeron was coming to work alone. >> orgeron: follow me. >> wertheim: all right. we were invited inside l.s.u. football for a few days in august, when louisiana had one of the highest covid rates in the country. players were back in the gym, but they weren't training in a bubble. everyone here goes home at night. the team tracks players' temperatures, administers regular covid tests, isolates those who test positive and quarantines anyone who comes into contact with the virus. >> orgeron: that's from the covid? >> all over... >> orgeron: really? >> wertheim: l.s.u. hasn't disclosed figures but orgeron said this week most of his players have had covid. >> wertheim: how much of your day to day is devoted to this virus? >> orgeron: what we do, we have a protocol here. and i follow it. whatever it is they tell me to do, i do, and then i coach. and i really, my tv hasn't been on for six weeks now. >> wertheim: why's that? >> orgeron: i know there's a lot of stuff goin' on out there. and, look, i understand. and but for right now, my job is

to coach this football team. >> wertheim: and you've been outspoken. you want there to be football this fall-- >> orgeron: yes, yes. i think football is good for everybody. i've seen them practice, and not get sick. i've seen them get sick. last a couple of days, and come back. you know, they have their ten- day quarantine. but i ask them, "how sick were you?" said, "coach, i had a little cough." so i think that the young players, when they do get sick, get over it quick. >> wertheim: have you come to grips with the idea that there might not be football this fall? >> orgeron: yeah, i don't let it enter my mind. >> wertheim: don't even think about it. >> orgeron: no. but i know it could happen. i know at l.s.u., we've prepared these guys to play, we didn't blink. we're ready. here come the tigers baby. stay, stay. there you go, be patient. >> wertheim: even in these first practices, the coach insisted on intensity. >> orgeron: do it right. dammit. >> wertheim: we watched things get a little heated out there the other day no balls, no helmets, no pads-- >> orgeron: yeah, yeah. doesn't matter if you don't have no pads. but you can have energy. set hut! hands on him, nice job. >> wertheim: i notice you use the word energy a lot. >> orgeron: yes. >> wertheim: it's important to >> orgeron: yes.

>> wertheim: why? >> orgeron: yeah. i hate quiet. i-- if it's quiet, it ain't good to me. >> wertheim: there's no quiet in his schedule. after a 14-hour day, we trailed him to a local boxing gym. orgeron manages to conform to every cliche about a football coach and at the same time smash the mold. for starters, there's his voice... >> orgeron: here we go baby. >> wertheim: orgeron sounds like a man who gargles crawfish shells... >> orgeron: go tigers! >> wertheim: ...and garnishes that rasp with a cajun accent. >> orgeron: you ain't gonna corner me big boy. >> wertheim: we put the obvious question to tyler shelvin, a defensive lineman. that voice. you always understand what he's saying? >> tyler shelvin: yes, sir. i-- i actually can understand it, 'cause i'm a louisiana guy. >> wertheim: anyone imitate his voice on the team? >> shelvin: everybody does. >> wertheim: you do it? >> shelvin: let's see. hey, big t. >> wertheim: you're big t? >> shelvin: yeah, i'm big t. >> orgeron: big t-- who was the first one to offer you a scholarship? >> shelvin: coach o. >> wertheim: you always had that distinct voice? >> orgeron: you know, i think it's grown throughout the years. a lot of time when it gets gravelly, 'cause it gets wore out.

but i think that-- it's something that i use as a tool. it's loud, and it's demanding. you can take control. inside. hut. >> wertheim: years of coaching forged that rasp but orgeron's accent was born here, in lafourche parish, about 75 miles down the bayou from baton rouge. the orgerons are cajun, descended from french canadians, who were exiled to louisiana's swamps in the 1700s, and have, proudly, resisted assimilation ever since. when we stopped by, coach o's mother coco insisted we eat before we talk, and, really, who were we to resist seafood gumbo? this is absolutely delicious. >> coco orgeron: thank you. i appreciate that. >> wertheim: the family lived to play football. the late ed orgeron sr. would coach the local kids on a field across from their house. >> coco orgeron: oh, that was the playground of the whole neighborhood. the ditch was the 50 yard-line and the sideline was a hedge.

and every once in a while, if you'd go up the sideline, you were in the hedges. >> wertheim: her son stood six- two and 270 pounds by the time he was 15, a star player on both offense and defense in high school. the south lafourche tarpons were the 1977 louisiana state champions. but saturdays were all about college football. what did l.s.u. football mean to this family? >> coco orgeron: it was a big part of our family but it wasn't something we could go and go to the game. >> wertheim: why not? >> coco orgeron: we could not afford these-- you know, that was an outing. it was expen-- you couldn't get a ticket even. >> wertheim: when his son asked for tickets to an l.s.u. game, ed orgeron sr. delivered the ultimate pep talk: >> orgeron: he said, "son, we can't afford that. but let me tell you somethin'. if you keep on working, you won't need a ticket to get into tiger stadium. >> wertheim: orgeron did get in. l.s.u. gave him a football

scholarship, but homesick and overwhelmed by the big campus, he quit after two weeks, and hightailed it back to the bayou. >> orgeron: and the next day my daddy woke me up at 6:00 in the morning and said, "let's go, we're going to work," i was diggin' ditches. and people would pass us on the side of the road, "you quitter." you couldn't take it." it was the worst day of my life. but my father just looked at me and said, "dig." >> wertheim: he'd dig his way back to baton rouge, of course, but it took him 35 years to go those 75 miles. first he transferred to play for northwestern state and then, after graduation, took volunteer coaching jobs while moonlighting in the hull of a shrimp boat. >> orgeron: and i'll never forget, man, we shoveled shrimp from 5:00 in the mornin' till 10:00 at night. i had a shovel in my hand. and the-- phone rang. and he goes, "hey, man, they have an-- assistant strength coach job at arkansas. do you want it?" i went, "hold on." i took the shrimp shovel-- shoomp. i threw it in the bayou. and i said, "hell, yeah." he said, "okay, man. you gotta be here by monday." i said, "i got one question for

you." he said, "what?" i said, "where the hell is arkansas, man? >> wertheim: he spent the next quarter-century pinballing around the college football landscape, resigning from miami while he struggled with alcoholism. sober he says for 20 years, orgeron has still been dealt his share of blows by the profession. in 2013, despite his success as an interim coach for u.s.c., he was denied the full-time job. you want to hear that story i heard? >> orgeron: what is that? >> wertheim: players loved you. the fans loved you. the coaches loved you. and the high-up said, "we-- we need the kind of guy who's got golf clubs in his trunk." >> orgeron: exactly right. now, i c-- i'm not a country club guy. >> wertheim: you think where you're from, even your-- your accent-- >> orgeron: yes. >> wertheim: --influenced that decision? >> orgeron: for sure. no question. >> wertheim: what are some of the stereotypes or misconceptions people might have about cajun population? >> orgeron: dumb. not worthy. not worldly. >> wertheim: now back home in louisiana, coach o isn't just

understood, he's appreciated. orgeron was hired as an l.s.u. assistant in 2015 and promoted to head coach the following year, earning an annual salary that's now swelled to $7 million, and orgeron cemented his status when the tigers beat rival alabama for the first time in eight years, delighting fans, one in particular. what do you remember about l.s.u. beating alabama last year? >> coco orgeron: you know, i love their stadium. i don't care for what the people say. they're kind of loud and boisterous. but when we won, i enjoyed the living hell out of it. >> wertheim: i'm getting a sense of what it must be like to sit on that couch and watch a game with you. >> coco orgeron: come on down. >> wertheim: and yet for all the earmarks of a fairy tale, the story is not entirely tidy. within days of our visit, "usa today" reported that, in 2016, an l.s.u. player allegedly

sexually assaulted two classmates. orgeron was then an assistant coach at the school. he told us he didn't know about the alleged assault. more broadly: orgeron helms a top program at a time when the ethics of big money college sports are being challenged. some powerhouse football programs make in excess of $100 million in annual revenue, mostly from giant television rights contracts. the incentive for schools to salvage this season and play through the pandemic is clear. the incentive for players is less clear. these players are-- they're unpaid, they're young, they don't have a union. they're bear-hugging the other guy. you think you're asking too much of them? >> orgeron: no, i don't think so. i-- i really don't. i don't think so. and look, let me tell you something about that unpaid stuff and everything. when you sign, you get-- just like i did-- you get an opportunity in life. >> wertheim: a lot of money coming into this program, but these kids are getting an opportunity? >> orgeron: they're gettin' an education. they're gonna network. a lot of our guys are goin'--

goin' into the n.f.l. and makin' a lot of money. but that's just the steps that they've got to take. >> wertheim: but some players have decided risk outweighs opportunity. remember ja'marr chase, the award-winning wide receiver, and tyler shelvin, the lineman? within weeks of our visit, both decided not to play this sideways season and instead look ahead to the 2021 n.f.l. draft. with kickoff one week away, s.e.c. teams will bump up covid testing to three times a week; players who test positive will have to pass cardiac evaluations before they can return to play. attendance at l.s.u. games will be capped at 25% or 25,000 fans and, just as crucially, no tailgating. on the day we left town, orgeron let us inside tiger stadium, just as his father predicted: no ticket required. >> orgeron: welcome to death valley, where opponents dreams come to die. >> wertheim: they say opponents

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