re: Where does LSU rank as a program in college football?

Coaches would definitely prefer to take the open USC (Los Angeles) job and soon-to-be-open UTex job over LSU any day (UTex can easily outbid LSU for a coach). Miami has had more success than LSU in recent decades but has a much smaller budget and worse facilities than LSU, so I think LSU would be a little ahead of them in the coaching search, even though they have the huge Miami market to recruit from. Still, that means that LSU would only get the third best coach available this year, behind USC and UTex. And if Georgia pressures Richt out, then they also will compete with LSU, as they have the Atlanta talent pool to attract a top-notch coach. The city of Atlanta alone has a million more people to recruit from than the entire state of Louisiana has.