...it's apparent to me, though I could certainly be all wet, that the Johnny Jones stuff is a PR blitz by the Dale Brown/Collis Temple gang intended to present the fans with something of a fait accompli that generates some sort of grounsdwell of acceptance. I don't think they counted on such a cold reaction from the folks to date, but supposedly they're in Alleva's face enough that he hasn't told them no yet.

But it won't happen, because in June there will be 7 new people on the Board of Supervisors (or pretty close, depending on how many current BOS people get reappointed, and not many are supposed to).

And they're seriously considering, if it hasn't already been decided, reorganizing LSU to combine the jobs Michael Martin and John Lombardi already have.

Now, Lombardi's contract is up in December, and he's done. And Martin is talking about retiring, and saying he doesn't really want to take over that increased responsibility of the combined job.

So what that means is you're going to have a brand new Big Swingin' Dick brought in to run LSU by the fall, or at least by next summer.

And when that Big Swingin' Dick shows up and starts reviewing the troops, if I'm Joe Alleva I probably want to make a good impression.

If I'm Alleva and I've got to sit down with the Big Swingin' Dick, I'm going to know going in that the BSD has already heard from a decent number of folks that I suck. Mr. BSD is also going to remember that Alleva was the AD at Duke when that fiasco with the lacrosse team went down and he's likely going to think of Alleva as suspect because of that.

And if I'm Alleva and I'm sitting down to discuss the state of LSU athletics and convince Mr. BSD that he needs to leave me in charge, am I really comfortable saying, when I get to men's basketball, that I just hired a guy who was the bag man that put LSU on probation and languished in obscurity for a decade at North Texas until we scraped him off and hired him cheap because the local AAU honcho and an 80-year old former coach told me so?

What I'm saying is that Alleva's not stupid. He's got to look at this thing and realize that if he goes cheap and hires Johnny Jones he's putting his own neck on the chopping block.

Because whoever gets the LSU hoops job is not going to have the program on a solid footing by the time Mr. BSD takes that meeting with Alleva.
It'll take two recruiting classes to make that happen and that reclamation project will be ongoing.

Maybe if you hire Johnny Jones and he hooks up the Randy Livingston/Bob Starkey/Collis Temple crew you might be able to reel in some commitments from the local guys like Jarrell Martin and Brian Bridgewater, but even then you're still not going to be generating a lot of national buzz. Whereas if you make a national-type hire, Mr. BSD will look at that and say "I don't know what the detractors have against this guy, but it looks like he's got this thing moving in the right direction so I'm not going to look to make a change with the AD at this point."

You hire Johnny Jones and you're taking a big risk that the program will stay mediocre or worse and still not generate any fan interest. And Mr. BSD will be tempted a great deal more to put his own stamp on the athletic department.

Alleva being the big fan of self-preservation that he is, I'll bet he tells the Dale Brown crowd "sure, we'll look at Johnny and I like him a lot, but let's see who else we can get" - and then ends up putting out $2 million-plus for somebody more high-profile that he has a connection with like Mike Brey or Jamie Dixon (though I don't know what Alleva's connection with Dixon is).