The Athletic wrote this article about Sloan’s transition to LSU:
BATON ROUGE, La. — As Tigers assistant Brian Polian opened up this spring’s LSUcoaches clinic, he introduced each member of Brian Kelly’s new staff to the high school coaches in attendance. And as Polian went coach to coach, he smiled as he reached the new LSUquarterback coach: Joe Sloan.
“I like to call him ‘The Mayor,’” Polian joked, because Sloan knew everybody in town.
The comment got a laugh, but this is not just a bit. There’s a reason he was one of the two or three LSU assistants who showed up early to schmooze with high school coaches. There’s a reason watching him at LSU’s 7-on-7 camp last week was watching him go field to field charming top recruits with a grin on his face. There’s a reason he became Skip Holtz’s most trusted Louisiana Tech assistant and why this East Coast guy from Virginia has become one of the more well-known recruiters in the distinct world of Louisiana. It’s because Sloan knows how to relate. And he likes doing it.
“That’s Joe in a nutshell, man,” said Blake Baker, the former LSU linebackers coach who worked with Sloan for five years at Louisiana Tech. “I call him the politician. He’s always working some sort of angle. He’s always up to something. You never know with ol’ Joe.”
“He’s an interesting guy. He’s a jack of all trades,” former All-Conference USA receiver Teddy Veal said. Sloan is a former honors student at East Carolina who’s “a bit of a control freak” and loves rental properties and football and politics and many interests in between. “He’s literally said if he weren’t a coach he’d be in politics,” per former Louisiana Tech quarterback Luke Anthony. Sloan rose from being Holtz’s ECU backup quarterback to his South Florida grad assistant to his Louisiana Tech offensive coordinator before being named interim head coach after Holtz’s November firing. He even interviewed for the head job.
Now, he’s LSU’s quarterbacks coach. And during a crucial summer in which LSU is in the mix for multiple five-star quarterback recruits and nearing a season in which LSU essentially has a three-man quarterback competition, the 35-year-old assistant might be one of the most important people on campus this fall.
And if you ask those who saw Sloan’s nine years at Louisiana Tech, they’ll tell you he’s destined for bigger things. They say he should be a head coach already and will be one soon. They say he handled more things at Louisiana Tech than anybody ever understood. But for now, though, he’s looking to prove his worth in the SEC.
“I trust Joe as much as any coach I’ve ever been around,” Holtz said.
There was a stretch of time not too long ago when Louisiana Tech went a full season without academic advisors. Well, that’s not entirely true. Joe Sloan was the academic advisor.
Holtz had to figure out what to do. “It was broke,” he said, “and when something’s broke you give it to your best guy.” That guy was the young Sloan. Holtz admitted most coaches given that task would have groaned and said, “Uh, really?” But Sloan rolled up his sleeves and dove in.
Sloan became the primary person in charge of which players were in what classes and how many credit hours every player carried. He made sure players were eligible and on track to earn degrees. And when Louisiana Tech finally did replace those roles, it was Sloan in charge of interviewing each new hire and building Tech’s academic support department.
“Two things,” Baker says with a laugh. “One, he did wear a lot of hats. Two, he loved it.”
Holtz brought Sloan with him from South Florida in 2013 as an unknown, 27-year-old graduate assistant and gave him the inside receivers coach job. So as such a young, inexperienced coach, Sloan understood he needed to prove his worth. In turn, he took on any role he could get his hands on. That first offseason, Holtz assigned Sloan to be in charge of the Baton Rouge recruiting area, a fertile ground for top talent where SEC schools and Group of 5 powers battled for prospects. A local friend asked Holtz, “Skip, you wanna put your youngest coach down in Baton Rouge?” He did, because he knew how relatable Sloan could be. And Sloan quickly learned Louisiana and built a pipeline up to Ruston.
A year later, Sloan was Louisiana Tech’s recruiting coordinator. The next year, he was assistant head coach. By 2019, he was an offensive coordinator.
“What I realized was everything you gave him, it turned to gold,” Holtz said. “And when I say it turned to gold, it was handled. You didn’t have surprises. He was organized. He crossed T’s and dotted I’s. He was as thorough as he could be.”
As a friend who stood in Sloan’s wedding, Baker joked Sloan’s greatest strength has the risk of becoming his greatest weakness. Because Sloan is what Holtz calls a “brilliant” person who received one B in all of college — and it was allegedly an 89 — and he wants to take on everything. He wants to become the expert. Sloan went to Holtz constantly trying to soak up new skills. I want to learn about calling plays. I want to learn about being a head coach. I want to learn how you do roster management. And because he’s smart enough, Holtz said, “He has the mental capacity to handle it all. But even more importantly, there’s a lot of people that are smart, but he has the drive to handle it all.”
“How many times he went above and beyond without most people even knowing what he was doing,” Baker said, “nobody was giving him a pat on the back. I might have been the only person in the building that knew he went the extra mile for a certain recruit or academics. He’s not looking for a pat on the back.”
Anybody who spends enough time around football can tell there are certain coaches who are excellent in what they do, and they rise up the ranks. Maybe they’re more great coaches than organizers. Maybe they’re more of a recruiter. Then there are those who spend all these years creating a 360-degree plan to run their own program when the time comes. Sloan is in that camp. Holtz thinks because Sloan took on all those tasks, he’ll have the genuine experience to know the right way to run each department.
Sloan (middle) with Garrett Nussmeier (right). (Chris Parent / LSU Athletics)
But then there’s the football coaching part, too. Sloan was elevated to co-offensive coordinator in 2019, and Louisiana Tech went 10-3 with the No. 2 offense in the conference behind quarterback J’Mar Smith and the Bulldogssigned the No. 1 recruiting class in Conference USA. Holtz has always been heavily involved in offensive playcalling, running similar systems for decades as he won 152 games across stops at four schools. But those in the program started to see modernization as Sloan took on more control. Yes, Holtz kept his hand in playcalling, but Sloan ran all the meetings and created most of the gameplans. Louisiana Tech started using more NFL concepts and changing little nuances to keep up with the times.
Anthony, a transfer quarterback from Abilene Christian in 2020, credited Sloan for his organization in simplifying complex schemes for his quarterbacks. Each scenario had a direct answer. Each protection, each defensive alignment, Sloan had an easy check for quarterbacks to run.”
BATON ROUGE, La. — As Tigers assistant Brian Polian opened up this spring’s LSUcoaches clinic, he introduced each member of Brian Kelly’s new staff to the high school coaches in attendance. And as Polian went coach to coach, he smiled as he reached the new LSUquarterback coach: Joe Sloan.
“I like to call him ‘The Mayor,’” Polian joked, because Sloan knew everybody in town.
The comment got a laugh, but this is not just a bit. There’s a reason he was one of the two or three LSU assistants who showed up early to schmooze with high school coaches. There’s a reason watching him at LSU’s 7-on-7 camp last week was watching him go field to field charming top recruits with a grin on his face. There’s a reason he became Skip Holtz’s most trusted Louisiana Tech assistant and why this East Coast guy from Virginia has become one of the more well-known recruiters in the distinct world of Louisiana. It’s because Sloan knows how to relate. And he likes doing it.
“That’s Joe in a nutshell, man,” said Blake Baker, the former LSU linebackers coach who worked with Sloan for five years at Louisiana Tech. “I call him the politician. He’s always working some sort of angle. He’s always up to something. You never know with ol’ Joe.”
“He’s an interesting guy. He’s a jack of all trades,” former All-Conference USA receiver Teddy Veal said. Sloan is a former honors student at East Carolina who’s “a bit of a control freak” and loves rental properties and football and politics and many interests in between. “He’s literally said if he weren’t a coach he’d be in politics,” per former Louisiana Tech quarterback Luke Anthony. Sloan rose from being Holtz’s ECU backup quarterback to his South Florida grad assistant to his Louisiana Tech offensive coordinator before being named interim head coach after Holtz’s November firing. He even interviewed for the head job.
Now, he’s LSU’s quarterbacks coach. And during a crucial summer in which LSU is in the mix for multiple five-star quarterback recruits and nearing a season in which LSU essentially has a three-man quarterback competition, the 35-year-old assistant might be one of the most important people on campus this fall.
And if you ask those who saw Sloan’s nine years at Louisiana Tech, they’ll tell you he’s destined for bigger things. They say he should be a head coach already and will be one soon. They say he handled more things at Louisiana Tech than anybody ever understood. But for now, though, he’s looking to prove his worth in the SEC.
“I trust Joe as much as any coach I’ve ever been around,” Holtz said.
There was a stretch of time not too long ago when Louisiana Tech went a full season without academic advisors. Well, that’s not entirely true. Joe Sloan was the academic advisor.
Holtz had to figure out what to do. “It was broke,” he said, “and when something’s broke you give it to your best guy.” That guy was the young Sloan. Holtz admitted most coaches given that task would have groaned and said, “Uh, really?” But Sloan rolled up his sleeves and dove in.
Sloan became the primary person in charge of which players were in what classes and how many credit hours every player carried. He made sure players were eligible and on track to earn degrees. And when Louisiana Tech finally did replace those roles, it was Sloan in charge of interviewing each new hire and building Tech’s academic support department.
“Two things,” Baker says with a laugh. “One, he did wear a lot of hats. Two, he loved it.”
Holtz brought Sloan with him from South Florida in 2013 as an unknown, 27-year-old graduate assistant and gave him the inside receivers coach job. So as such a young, inexperienced coach, Sloan understood he needed to prove his worth. In turn, he took on any role he could get his hands on. That first offseason, Holtz assigned Sloan to be in charge of the Baton Rouge recruiting area, a fertile ground for top talent where SEC schools and Group of 5 powers battled for prospects. A local friend asked Holtz, “Skip, you wanna put your youngest coach down in Baton Rouge?” He did, because he knew how relatable Sloan could be. And Sloan quickly learned Louisiana and built a pipeline up to Ruston.
A year later, Sloan was Louisiana Tech’s recruiting coordinator. The next year, he was assistant head coach. By 2019, he was an offensive coordinator.
“What I realized was everything you gave him, it turned to gold,” Holtz said. “And when I say it turned to gold, it was handled. You didn’t have surprises. He was organized. He crossed T’s and dotted I’s. He was as thorough as he could be.”
As a friend who stood in Sloan’s wedding, Baker joked Sloan’s greatest strength has the risk of becoming his greatest weakness. Because Sloan is what Holtz calls a “brilliant” person who received one B in all of college — and it was allegedly an 89 — and he wants to take on everything. He wants to become the expert. Sloan went to Holtz constantly trying to soak up new skills. I want to learn about calling plays. I want to learn about being a head coach. I want to learn how you do roster management. And because he’s smart enough, Holtz said, “He has the mental capacity to handle it all. But even more importantly, there’s a lot of people that are smart, but he has the drive to handle it all.”
“How many times he went above and beyond without most people even knowing what he was doing,” Baker said, “nobody was giving him a pat on the back. I might have been the only person in the building that knew he went the extra mile for a certain recruit or academics. He’s not looking for a pat on the back.”
Anybody who spends enough time around football can tell there are certain coaches who are excellent in what they do, and they rise up the ranks. Maybe they’re more great coaches than organizers. Maybe they’re more of a recruiter. Then there are those who spend all these years creating a 360-degree plan to run their own program when the time comes. Sloan is in that camp. Holtz thinks because Sloan took on all those tasks, he’ll have the genuine experience to know the right way to run each department.
Sloan (middle) with Garrett Nussmeier (right). (Chris Parent / LSU Athletics)
But then there’s the football coaching part, too. Sloan was elevated to co-offensive coordinator in 2019, and Louisiana Tech went 10-3 with the No. 2 offense in the conference behind quarterback J’Mar Smith and the Bulldogssigned the No. 1 recruiting class in Conference USA. Holtz has always been heavily involved in offensive playcalling, running similar systems for decades as he won 152 games across stops at four schools. But those in the program started to see modernization as Sloan took on more control. Yes, Holtz kept his hand in playcalling, but Sloan ran all the meetings and created most of the gameplans. Louisiana Tech started using more NFL concepts and changing little nuances to keep up with the times.
Anthony, a transfer quarterback from Abilene Christian in 2020, credited Sloan for his organization in simplifying complex schemes for his quarterbacks. Each scenario had a direct answer. Each protection, each defensive alignment, Sloan had an easy check for quarterbacks to run.”
