Welcome to 2016. The game done changed.

Back when Stanley interviewed Petrino, Beamer, Spurrier, RC Slocum, and the other 20 "major candidates", this was the objective -- hire the best. Hire the guy with the best credentials and when he says no, hire the next best.

We could pay Jimbo or Herman 7 million and then they lose 3 games and the sky falls. And in the SEC, that's what would've happened.

Of course no other SEC school would hire O. That's not an algorithm and that should not be part of the coaching-penis-measuring contest. It's also not an equation that makes any sense to say "Kentucky would not have hired him; why did we?" Scenario, what if Tennessee would have fired Butch Jones midway through the season and hired interim Bob Shoop? What if he won the remaining games and then got a promotion to HC for next year? LSU would not have hired Shoop. Vandy already had him and wouldn't hire him. So, where are we going with this logic? Some times, what fits is a little too unique to even describe or legitimize.

But as I said, the game done changed. Aside from Saban and Meyer (and there is no other coach on their plane...Jimbo included), everyone else gets it done with the intangibles. We can pay our coordinators twice and even three times what Florida State and Miami pay theirs. Keeping a wall around Louisiana is what it is about...O obviously is a master at that. The head man is now simply the man who lands the coordinators who -- excluding Bama and Ohio State -- help define the team. Have we forgotten who was the head coach at this university for the past 11 damn years? He won a NC...he was never an "elite" head coach, but he was an "elite" intangibles man and a face for a university that can pay 1.5 million per coordinator and pay QB coaches what FSU and Miami pay their OC's.

I was never on the O train, but I see the sense in it today. You do not have to pay a coach 7 million dollars to come to LSU and win one SEC title every 4-5 years. Get the hosses (like my father so often reminds me ala Bobby Bowden) and get younger, but experienced coaches who are defining the game with their INTELLECT. The head coach just needs to buy in. Rich Rodriguez versus UGA 2006 Sugar Bowl ring a bell?

And yes, we need leadership from the top on down! It starts there. Joe may be the greatest AD in the world, but he is a PR nightmare!