I blame Jindal for forcing Alleva to keep Miles. It was definitely handled poorly, and Alleva showed a propensity for mishandling the press. He wasn’t a good leader (why hire the Duke lacrosse guy?), glad we have Woodward.
You keep assuming I'm the expert and have names lined up. Not my job. But damn sure AF is/was Alleva's. Best to interview as many as feasible. Two outside the program looks pretty lazy/incompetent. At the end of the day, its better to be lucky than good. Maybe Alleva was the one that stole Miles horseshoe he had up his ...
After. Jimbo and Herman turned the job down I was one of the very few who appoved of giving the job to Oeaux. If big nose Joe had conducted a search would whoever he hired have dine nearly as well? Congrats to Oeaux for outwitting Alleva and all the stipulations that were put on him and through it all working to change the offensive mindset from the dark ages to the future. Coaches by nature are extra stubborn people most noted by a refusal to change. Would anybother coach have been able to survive the fiasco of Canada and emerge with Joe Brady and give a 29 year old with limited experience free reign and make it work? All while continuing to recruit a a very high level? LSU has always recruited great except at the position that matters most. Now we a destination school for quarterbacks as well. You are so right about why interview people who you are not going to hire. Like that stupid Rooney rule in the NFL where you have to pretend to be interested in hiring a black coach. If I was a black coach being the token black guy would make me feel like Uncle Tom.
At the time, the others I personally would have interviewed were PJ Fleck, Charlie Strong, J Franklin, and Babers at Syracuse, who was doing great at that point. I know Strong was in disfavor due to TX, but he’s a good coach (7 years of success at Louisville is no fluke) and was handcuffed from day 1 at UT. Fleck unlikely to come and a bit unproven at that point, but worth interviewing. Franklin may be happy in Happy Valley but you never know if you don’t approach. Babers has fallen since, so perhaps better we didn’t in hindsight. Those were my 4 at the time.
O might have been less of a risk than those, considering two very successful interim stints. Plus at worst he could serve as a palate cleanser (and a $ break) for the up and then down Miles era.
Now, 3 years later, would any of those coaches have us rated a clear #1:and on the precipice of winning the SEC and National Championship? I very seriously doubt it. Not even Franklin who is the best of those you mentioned. Unlike almost everybody else here, I was in favor of hiring Oeaux after Fisher and Herman turned us down. His impressive stints as interim at USC and LSU were enough of an interview for me. We all should be giving thanks to the powers that be at USC for not recognizing what they had.
100% Once Oeaux was hired, I backed him. I wasn’t opposed to his hiring, just thought everything went down a bit abruptly, and Alleva just seemed aloof and a goof at hiring- didn’t come across as professional or a good decision maker or communicator, imo. But, in the end, I was fine with Oeaux, and whatever hopes/dreams I had for him have been exceeded this year!
It ended up working in the end, but hiring O was a huge gamble for Alleva. And let’s face it, if he had no produced this year, Woodward would be looking fo a new coach. Am happy this worked out. I was skeptical, esp after the loss to Troy. But the hiring process was awful
Yhe thing is that if Alleva had used the "hiring process" that you and so many hear wanted we most likely would have ended up with somebody else as head coach. Is here anybody here who can honestly say that it would have worked out nearly as well as it turned out?
No one can know the answer to that. How do you know we wouldn't have gotten here sooner, without the embarrassing loss to Troy? You don't. We are here now and we just need to appreciate it. But to discount people's feeling about the process and how it was handled isn't productive either.
