LAFAYETTE, La. -- Michael Desormeaux stepped to the podium at his introductory news conference as the head coach at Louisiana and channeled his Cajun roots. In his typical self-deprecating fashion, he deflected attention and delivered a one-liner straight to a constituency he understands fluently.
"All right, so I'll keep this short," he said. "I heard they got Jambalaya Shoppe and beer back there, and that's what everybody's here for."
Desormeaux comes from Cajun central casting, as his family genealogy -- handwritten, he points out -- traces back to the late 1700s here, when his first family member from France settled in the Acadiana region.