BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) LSU will not offer baseball coach Smoke Laval a pay raise if another school makes him an offer, athletic director Skip Bertman says.<br>
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``I want Smoke to do what he wants to do,'' said Bertman, a former LSU baseball coach who hired Laval as his top assistant before the 1984 season and recommended him as his successor for the 2002 season.<br>
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Bertman said Laval is getting ``a good salary and Smoke would never do this for a negotiating ploy.''<br>
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Laval, who leads the Southeastern Conference in regular-season SEC victories during his four years as LSU coach, has been linked by media reports to the vacant head coaching job at Oklahoma.<br>
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``Whoever started this, it's crazy,'' Laval said of reports linking him to the Oklahoma job. ``I don't have anything to say. I'm not there, and I've never been contacted by them.''<br>
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Bertman said he understands why Laval might entertain offers from other schools. LSU, which had nearly a dozen players with College World Series experience in 2003 and 2004, failed this year to win a regional for the first time since 1995.<br>
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``I wouldn't blame any coach for at least considering other possibilities, especially after this year, where the team probably didn't achieve as greatly as they should have based on preseason hype,'' Bertman said. ``Of course, no one is sadder about that than the players and Smoke and the coaches.''<br>
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Bertman coached LSU for 18 seasons. He won five national championships in 10 seasons.<br>
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Bertman said he had no problem when former LSU coach Nick Saban considered offers from NFL teams, eventually going to the Miami Dolphins.<br>
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Laval began as Bertman's successor in 2002 with a three-year contract and just finished the first year of another three-year deal, Bertman said.<br>
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``He does have security here, but maybe Oklahoma would give him a five-year contract,'' Bertman said.<br>
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(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
