I hope I'm 100% incorrect and will gladly accept being wrong, but hiring the defensive line coach, who was on nobody's radar, to be the head coach at LSU because he's "one of us" has to be one Alleva's worst decisions ever. Like I said I hope I'm 100% wrong because I don't want to see LSU football fall from national prominence to irrelevance.
Fisher and Herman turned the job down. Saban and Meyer were never an option. Assuming overtures were made to Dabo Sweeney and he wasn't interested, who would you have hired other than O?
I just don't understand the sentiment here. For the record I'm not an Alleva fan but who else was he going to get that late in the game? Go back and read the threads and you will see plenty of us upset with the decision and the lack of a true "search" at the end of the day it was a shot in the dark but there weren't many targets out there to hit. At least he hit one that is on our side. Bitching about it just seems counter productive. I blame Les. If he could have kept his hands out of the offensive pie he might still be here.
The thing I'm encouraged about with O is his stated direction to stay out of the way of his coordinators and just be a CEO type, like we were practically begging Miles to do for years. Given that Aranda has already proven to be one of the best DCs in the country and Canada has the potential to be a top OC, I think that bodes well for the team, especially if O can continue being the recruiter he's known to be and he shows he can make the right in game decisions.
We can speculate all we want. The proof starts this September. Unless he falls on his ass completely, and I don't think he will, it will take 2-3 years before any serious judgment can be made. I'm cautiously optimistic.
It's the blurry line that's labeled loyalty...to a program, to the University, to a specific coach, to a specific leader...sometimes they all meet in the same place. Other times they couldn't be further apart.
