If Dinardo would have fired Tepper..

I don't think Gerry was the leader that it takes to bring a team to a championship, esp a national one


so no, wouldn't have mattered

We would probably be good but not elite. Who knows.

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We would probably be good but not elite. Who knows.

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that's kind of where i'm at. he was a good bridge coach.

he showed that could be successful here especially if you start keeping La talent here.

Idk, but is take Morris Watts right now.

Stay on topic frickface

DiNardo was always a very level-headed guy, and was always a very good guy. In fact, I liked him much better than Saban or Miles. He was extremely good at getting a program off its feet, sort of playing a Lou Holtz type of role.

He was not temperamentally suited to being a championship coach, however, because unlike Holtz, he was an absolutely terrible disciplinarian.

Would he have won SEC titles if he had been able to keep Watts & Reese in place? Probably so.

Would he have won NC titles if he had been able to keep Watts & Reese in place? Probably not.

All this stuff during the 1990s was occurring within a larger framework of the entire LSU system become much more professionalized than it had been in the past, going beyond the AD and all the way up to the chancellor and system president.

In some ways, DiNardo may have been a free rider on the hard-nosed discipline instilled into the program by Hallman. After 1997, things started getting a little bit too lax.

Ultimately, I don't think DiNardo had the drive or the aggressiveness to push for the things that Saban got done at LSU, with the Cox Center and facilities and stuff like that; although I will say that it might be sort of an open question, because, like I mentioned earlier, all this stuff was happening to some degree anyway, with or without Saban. Even before Emmert, Jenkins was getting stuff done.

There can be no doubt, however, that DiNardo met with calamity when Watts & Reese left and were replaced by McConnell & Tepper. It was just absolutely ridiculous ... worse than Mall-veto even. The whole program, which had accomplished so much from 1995-1997, and was ranked #6 in October 1998, just became a joke, that fast. There was no excuse for losing all those games in '98 & '99.

As an X's & O's man, the team in 1997 was about as well coached of an LSU football team I've ever seen. Regardless of the dumb decisions made in that infamous home loss to Auburn, overall it was one of the most aesthetically pleasing LSU teams there ever was to watch. The running game and blocking schemes were magnificent. The passing attack had sharp routes (even if Herb Tyler was a terrible pocket passer who couldn't see over the heads of linemen). The option was a thing of beauty. On defense, players knew their assignments and played hard and smart. I haven't seen anything like it since.

And yet it wasn't enough, and it all fell apart, and the "drop linebacker" started coming into common usage. Tragic really.

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i thought 1998 was gonna be our year to win the SEC

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I'll never understandd why people couldn't foresee how shitty Tepper was early on. Illinois went 0-11. That's 0. for. 11. The same program that produced Red Grange and Dick Butkus. O. for. 11.

Thanks Doc...I literally have no more questions about Dinardo. You pretty much summed everything up

Not with Fulmer @UT & Spurrier @UF

Miles could not have done what Dinardo did, fact