I bet a lot of it has to do with the recruiting process. That is where the players really get to know the coaches & get close to them. They don't just commit to a school, but to a relationship with the coach.
Agreed. Remember the stories about the former LSU players talking with Saban while he was recruiting earlier this year?
No Bowe, no Marquise Hill, no Matt Flynn, no Highsmith, no Mauck, no Addai. The list goes on and on. That's just the ones who we know for sure would not have been here, and does not take into account any of the others. I am sure that had Saban not taken the job, we would have probably been forced to hire another mediocre up-and-comer like DiNardo, someone on the level of Franchione or Houston Nutt, who we probably would have fired by now as well. I don't even want to think about where our program would be right now in an alternate universe, had Nick decided to remain at Michigan State. Of all the coaches who were actually willing to take this job in 1999, there were none in Saban's league, as far as his credentials to that point.
Maybe not those particular players, but another good coach could've gotten some big-time recruits as well. LSU made the decision to hire a good coach. Had Saban not accepted the job, we could've found another pretty good hire. We were not forced to hire a bad coach because we had a complete mind-set change. And at the time we hired him, Saban wasn't nearly as highly regarded as he is now. His credentials were what exactly? I winning percentage a little above 50% at Michigan St.
At the time, we had our sights set on Dennis Erickson, who promptly rejected us. Ditto Butch Davis. That left us naming off coaches like Terry Bowden, Gary Crowton and Phil Bennett as serious candidates for the job before Saban's name came out of the blue. We hadn't really thought of him before, but when it came down to it, he had everything we were looking for that none of the other coaches did- NFL experience and success as a head coach at the major college level, winning big with his own recruits. None of the other coaches had this, not one. LSU fans say he was not well known before the hire- false. All it means is that he was not well known by LSU fans, but the fact is that he had already been offered two NFL head coaching jobs- the New York Giants, which he was so close to accepting that there were press releases saying he did... the job became Jim Fassel's, and the Colts job, which he turned down and eventually became Jim Mora's. It is common now for our fans to trivialize the hire in order to degrade Saban. "Saban had more tools at his disposal than any previous LSU coach." That is because Saban forced them to give them to him, or else he would not have come. Saban saw LSU as an opportunity, but at the time LSU needed him more than he needed LSU. Meaning, it isn't just that Saban was lucky that the LSU athletic program was so gracious to him. It's that he had enough clout to demand this as a condition of his arrival, unlike his predecessors, and the administration was forced to give in to him. This is an undeniable, indisputable fact- we were a mediocre football program. Not just for the last 2 DiNardo years, but for the better part of 25 years prior to Saban's arrival. It showed by the amount of coaches who wanted nothing to do with our job. You use the vague sentences "Well, we still could have made a pretty good hire." Saban was much better than "pretty good." Who do you think of that list of candidates could have inherited the team Saban did and gotten the same results in the same period of time? Who do you think could have gotten the same recruits to come to LSU? "Pretty good recruits" are what we got under every coach that was there before Saban, we weren't interested in that. Who else would have taken us from being a mediocre program, to an elite one? Who else was going to stop the decades long practice of other programs pillaging our in-state talent? People try to make it seem like we would be close to where we are today regardless of who was hired, because it makes Saban seem unimportant. Like he somehow "caught LSU at the right time." when in reality this program was going nowhere fast before he arrived, and had he not, it would have continued to wallow in mediocrity for years afterward. Had he not been hired, there is a very good chance that we might not even have a trip to Atlanta under our belt.
I think Saban was the perfect coach to turn LSU around. He was instrumental in getting our facilities upgraded and changing the attitudes of our fans, not to mention bringing in some excellent talent. However, he didn't do it all on his own. As I said, it was LSU who first made a decision to try & get a good coach and really try to be a successful program. In the decades before that, our attempts were half-a$$ed. Saban demanded the upgrades, but LSU obliged - not just because of Saban's "clout", but because we wanted to be a winner. The reason that Saban took the LSU job is because he saw the potential that we held. With us basically being the only in-state school in a talent-rich state, there's no reason our program should not be consistently among the top 15 in the nation. These factors allowed Saban to bring LSU to it's current level, but these factors are what they are & would be regardless of whether Saban was our coach or not. The "pretty good" recruits that DiNardo brought in were good enough to win Nick the SECCG in '01.
Saban did not walk on water. LSU had some great teams in the 80's and mid-late 90's. It's sad that you feel you need to trivialize those teams & 25 years of LSU Football, to make of some sort half-assed point about Saban. Also DiNardo had much more than "pretty good" talent on the roster when he left. If you don't think so, you are kidding yourself.
