BATON ROUGE, La. – LSU athletic director Joe Alleva, livid that Tom Herman backtracked on an oral agreement to be the next LSU coach, pulled his offer to the Houston coach late Friday night, a high-ranking source close to the search confirmed. The source said a perturbed Alleva told Herman’s agent, Trace Armstrong, via phone Friday night, “Don’t worry. I have a guy who wants the job.” Ed Orgeron will be introduced as LSU’s new coach at a news conference Saturday. As first reported by HornsDigest.com, Herman and LSU had an agreement in place for him to become LSU’s coach. The source would not divulge exact terms but did concede the annual compensation was “north of five (million per year).” Papers were to be signed Saturday morning in Houston. That changed when Armstrong called Alleva on Friday night to inform him that Herman wanted to hear out Texas; the Longhorns fell 31-9 to TCU on Friday afternoon to finish 5-7. It was then that Alleva, angered that Herman and Armstrong had reneged, pulled the offer and decided to hire Orgeron, the source said. Alleva is unfit to negotiate a Craigslist deal much less this university. He's always being played and is so naive he never realizes it. He and fking must go. Did we not learn anything from our past? article: So, that makes 17 years since LSU boldly set the market for a new football coach as it did when it hired Saban from Michigan State in 1999 for $1.2 million. During the negotiations, then-LSU athletic director Joe Dean and others with LSU balked at the idea of paying so much for a coach. And then-chancellor Mark Emmert stepped in and stopped the quibbling between Saban’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, and LSU. “Pay him what he wants.” And it was done. Emmert wasn’t looking for a bargain. He was shopping at Neiman Marcus, and he got value over a long period of time because he didn’t settle for journeyman defensive assistant coach Phil Bennett, who could have been hired at bargain prices. He didn’t settle for defensive coordinator Mike Archer as Dean did after the 1986 season and found himself looking for a new coach just four years later … and another just four years later … and another just five years later.
Miles was the right hire at the time it went south 8 years later. O was the right hire and I will be proven right down the road.
You are as wrong about this as you are about man caused climate change and man are you so wrong about that.
The difference between a real chancellor and athletic director. LSU is now the school that settles. But hey at least we have a Louisiana guy that wants the job. It will feel better knowing one of our own kept us in the land of mediocrity.
LSU fans are fanatical. The LSU Administrators are "bottom line" people. The Admins are in charge, not the fanatics. The fanatics have a vision for hiring a new football head coach: leave no stone un-turned and no expense spared in a nationwide thorough and relentless search for the BEST proven HC to be the new HC. The LSU Admins don't see it that way at all. So, there's disagreement between the LSU football fanatics and the LSU people who call all of the shots. Not surprisingly, the fanatics did not see their vision implemented.
I applaud Joe Alleva for telling Herman's agent to take a walk.... but I would have told them one thing more: "in the interest of fair play to everybody's finances, I'm calling Texas asap to tell them that LSU is no longer interested in your boy."
A strong argument can be made that Eaux was the right hire. To act as if the decision had no merit is juvenile. If we're spending top dollar on coordinators then hiring a strong lead man with an overall vision for the program isn't bad. We're basically paying head coach money for coordinators.
it's not the decision that has no merit. it's the path taken to get to that decision that has people disappointed and upset. if you do a full on national search (which is what Alleva said he would do), and O is the guy, hire him. And a strong argument can then be made that you picked the right guy. if you don't do a full on national search complete with multiple interviews (which is what all reports from the Administration tells is what actually happened) and you hire a career position coach with a brutal resume, then you can't really make an argument, because you don't actually know what any of those other guys brought to the table. what are their long term goals? what are their visions for the future? what would be their plan to make LSU great? right now that answer is "i don't know" because i didn't talk to them. those guys may have completely bombed out in the interview like Petrino did when Skip interviewed him. and you circle back around and hire O. or one of those guys may have caught your attention the way Saban did when he talked to Emmert. and you may have found a guy that could take us to all new heights. but no we have no clue if that guy is out there because we didn't actually look for him.
