re: what nick saban did for LSU

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Not sure if serious. But Les is not a clown when it comes to coaching abilities.

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Dead serious. LSU was out of the NC/SEC title picture by the middle of October. This team, as Les' teams generally do, has regressed as the season unfolds.

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Les is a great coach

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If you say so.

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Saban is a great coach.

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This is true.

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LSU does not have to automatically take a back seat to any team in the SEC or in the nation.

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Not automatically, but LSU usually ends up there scrounging for scaps and leftovers.

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This year is about where everyone with a brain thought it would be and we are sitting at two losses by a TOTAL of 6 points and you act like we are freaking YEARS removed from being competitive.

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LSU should have skullfricked Ole Miss. That loss is inexcusable.

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Do you realize how freaking AWESOME it is to root for a team that allows you to hold serious thoughts of title contention each and every year?

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Nobody really gives LSU any serious thought about title contention every year. A sportswriter or two may give it lip service, but there's never any really serious thought.

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We lost a ton of people to the draft, many of whom are having great rookie seasons.

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Most competitive teams do. What makes LSU any different?

However, I sure wish I had the optimism of some of you Pumpers. Perhaps I'll come back after next week and eat a big bowl of crow gumbo, but I simply do not see the infatuation with Coach Miles. I guess, at least he's not, Archmanardo. He's pretty much Charlie Mac 2.0, but Charlie Mac's teams were a helluva a lot more disciplined that Leslie's.

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Tchefuncte Tiger

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Wow. You are quite the Saban lover. Serious question..are you going to pull for Alabama or LSU next week? Doesn't sound like you could handle Miles beating Saban again.

Saban > Miles

Tchefuncte Tiger........

Exactly what planet are you on?

LSU's greatest success in its history has come since 2003, largely thanks to Miles. LSU leads the SEC in every imaginable fashion, winning 80 % of our games, since he showed up. In the greatest era of SEC Football, now a full decade long, LSU is the king.

Despite the scheduling fact that in this same period when LSU plays Bama Florida and UF- who have won 5 more NCs in this period-- every year- LSU has won more than any of them.

I wonder what he said when Saban/Bama lost to USC/Spurrier a few years ago. Or when UF/Meyer lost to Ole Miss during UF's 2006 NC run.

You are no Tiger fan.

This is the greatest run in LSU history, and Miles has a better winning percentage than nearly everyone in the SEC. Even with Bama's recent success, as stated in my earlier posts.

Had we hired Spurrier, who owns Saban, I wonder what this moron would say, (especially since Miles has never lost to Spurrier). Or if we had hired Urban Meyer, whom Miles is the only coach whom Meyer split with.

Don't hand me the recruiting BS either.

LSU has been ever so slightly out recruited by both UF and Alabama as well in this period, but has an overall better record than both in this stretch.

I'll say it again. If Bama had not gotten a mulligan, Tchefuncte Tiger and the rest of his merry minstrels wouldn't even be here.

Go suck Saban on the Bama board, Tchefuncte Tiger.

If LSU never took a chance on him, he would not be coaching at bama. He won a title and bana pretty.much just shoved Shula aside, who took them to their first bowl game in several years, just to hire nick.

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"Dinardo left a strong recruiting class, common knowledge." Bull Shite... you all may repeat that over and over just to try to degrade Saban's accomplishments...

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it's not an attempt to degrade Saban, it's just fact that Dinardo left him with a roster that had a number of guys who went to the NFL. and it wasn't a one class thing.

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but at the time in the late '90s, just about all the fans were in complete desperation because not only was the record bad and getting worse, recruiting was thought to be going to the dogs.

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the record was bad, but there wasn't a hopeless feeling that we couldn't dig out. Gerry whiffed on some coaching hires, lost the team and fanbase, and had to go. but fans with half a brain that weren't prone to "woe is me" stuff knew that things could improve fairly quickly. btw, Dinardo's last class (Eric Edwards, Trev Faulk, Bradie James, etc.) was pretty good. not sure where recruiting was "going to the dogs."

no doubt Saban raised the profile of the program. but it wasn't like he had to build from scratch. LSU had talent, and believed it could win again. it just needed some things to break right for its potential to be realized - including the right coach, which Saban turned out to be.

I personally think that Mark Emmert deserves more credit than anybody for the resurrection of the LSU football and overall athletics programs. His vision enabled Saban to have his success.

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Whatever Saban was or wasn't at LSU, he DID "restore" a program that was not just in decline, it had declined to the bottom of the SEC. It is probably more accurate to say "He created a program..." as there was nothing, history or precedent, to "restore" to. Hate the man all you want... but don't deny what he accomplished.

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Truth. In the Mac years, LSU was respectable, but lived in the shadow of Alabama, Ole Miss (sometimes), Tennessee in particular. And LSU couldn't win the big bowls - like versus Nebraska and Penn State. Once Mac packed, with the exception of the Arnsparger bubble and the one good Archer year, whatever magic there may have been was gone and LSU was living in the dismal shadow world of abject failure. Not until DiNardo came and "brought back the magic" for a spell, LSU had not experienced anything that resembled success in at least a decade. And by the time Dinardo left, he had them spiraling downward again. But recruiting had improved. Enter Nick Saban, beaten as HC of Michigan State in the Indy Bowl by Dinardo's LSU. Seemed a very questionable hire at the time. Who knew he'd remake LSU's football culture in about five years? But that's what he did, with 2003 as the shining star. Then exit Nick Saban and enter Les Miles the Enigma HC. Great? Lucky? Bonehead? Lazy? Who can say? But LSU has managed to kind of prosper under his watch. It's just he too, like Mac, can't seem to win the big ones (see 1/9). And with Saban in Tuscaloosa now, we live again in the shadow of Alabama. I want to see LSU finally break out! I just don't know if CLM is the coach to lead us out of that place.

If you want to see what the future would have been like at LSU if Saban stayed just look at what he has done at Bama winning 3 of the last 4 titles. Very few coaches (if any) in the history of college football can say that. The guy is one of the greatest college coaches of all time.