re: The "Dark Ages" of LSU Football

I think the treatment of Mac at the end of his tenure was surely disrespectful, but had Rein actually coached here there's a good chance we would not view Mac's departure as "step one". we'll just never know, but there's not question he was better prepared to be a successful HC (even at his relatively young age) than Stovall or Archer was. Consider that he was only 34 when he died. He could potentially still be coaching today.

In the depths of the Hallman era, SI ran a story that did a bit of a root cause analysis on how things got that bad at LSU.
- Rein's unfortunate death
- Small-time thinking
- political infighting
- bad (or just not the best) coaching hires in Stovall/Arnsparger/Archer progression

I would also add that we didn't really deal w/ the changing recruiting landscape (prop 48, etc) at the time.

ETA: Had LSU hired Pat Sullivan instead of Dinardo to replace Curly, is there a chance the program is run down even further to a point that it's a job Saban doesn't want?