re: Was LSU's hiring of Curley Hallman the worst hiring in the..

Gerry Faust. Hiring a high school coach to run ND's program has to be the worst.

JD hired them.

Agree with Faust....maybe.

Faust's Notre Dame tenure started on a high note with a 27-9 victory over LSU in the 1981 season opener, one of the most widely anticipated games in school history. After top-ranked Michigan lost to Wisconsin on that same day, Notre Dame was voted #1 in the polls. The success was short-lived, however, as Michigan defeated Notre Dame the following week, 25-7. It was all downhill after that as the Irish finished 5-6 that year, their first losing season since 1963. Faust would end his stint at Notre Dame with a 30-26-1 record, never winning more than seven games in one season and never coming even close to contending for a national title. This included four consecutive losses against Air Force, whom the Irish had never lost to prior to 1982. Despite his mediocre record and growing discontent among Irish fans, Faust was allowed to remain at Notre Dame for the entire duration of his five-year contract.

With no collegiate coaching experience whatsoever, Faust was ill-prepared for the demands of the job. The highlights of his tenure at Notre Dame included a 1983 Liberty Bowl victory over Boston College and an appearance in the 1984 Aloha Bowl. His 1982 squad defeated Michigan by a score of 23-17 and upset the then top-ranked, Dan Marino-led Pitt Panthers, 31-16. In 1983, the Irish opened the season with a 52-6 win over Purdue while his 1984 team defeated Colorado by a score of 55-14 and posted a 44-7 rout over Penn State.

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Was LSU's hiring of Curley Hallman the worst hiring in the..
history of college football?

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I'm not sure he was the worst coach at LSU.

Mike Archer really ran the program into the ground.

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People forget, when curley came here, he was left with absolutely nothing. Archer killed the program.

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People haven't forgotten. This whole thread has turned into a debate over who was worse, Hallman or Archer(read it from pager 1).

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Mike Archer was worse. Curley left the program where he found it. Mike Archer did not.

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Curley...was left with NOTHING.
he, on the other hand, had an excellent recruiting class which helped his successor...Dinardo.
He got a lot of credit that was due Hallman.

Hallaman was not given credit for the crap that Archer left, or the benefits that Dinardo got.

Once Dinardo had his own people..it all went downhill again.

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Archer is by far the worst hire in LSU history.

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I continue to be stunned by the response (maybe that's my fault). I am in the unfortunate position of having to defend Archer (and my heart really isn't into it) to try to bring some sense to, apparently, a significant number out there.

I am not saying that Archer did a good job. The only "excuse" (explanation really) that I offer is his age and relative inexperience. Archer failed as the head coach of LSU. No question. If we want to describe it as a failure to recruit, or a failure to motivate, manage, inspire, I'm with you on all of that.

But HOW can Archer take the hit for Curley's 3rd and 4th years? HOW? If Curley was better (and Archer started high and finished low, just like Dinardo) WHY didn't LSU improve with Curley as coach? Curley was a better recruiter than Archer (who wasn't?), but Curley couldn't coach a pitbull to be mean.

I was born during the McClendon reign, and I've liked every coach LSU had (at least while they had the job) except Curley. I disliked Curley from the beginning. I disliked him at every press conference when he had no answers, and I disliked him when he continued to fail, and inexplicably was allowed to. Archer was fired after 2 losing seasons. Ditto for Dinardo, Ditto for Stovall (although he did a W-L-W-L freaky thing with his seasons, the dreaded "I" problem). Mac...hell, I still don't know why Mac was fired.

But Curley got 4 seasons, and won 18 games. Archer won 18 games in the first 23 months he was LSU's coach. And I don't want to hear that they were Arnsparger's players, that's intellectual BS, Archer was at LSU the entire time with Arnsparger, the DC for the last 2 years. Curley did the rarest of all things - he lost with the previous coach's players AND his own players. Just hasn't happened in LSU history for us to have a reference.

In fact, Curley has lost everywhere and every year he did not have Brett Favre on his team. It's stunning that this has to be pointed out - LSU has won 19 games since August of 2007, even with the "miserable" 2008 season -- Curley won 18 games in 4 seasons. Curley lost TWENTY-EIGHT games in 4 years. To count backwards to get 28 losses, we have to go all the way back into Dinardo's last game, during the 1999 season. That's 9 seasons and change for those of you in Rio Linda, CA.

If you want to say Archer was "bad", I'm in agreement. If you want to say that Archer failed to do, certainly the little, important things that make a football program, I agree. However, when you stack the two up, man-to-man, coach-to-coach, Archer did a better job, and was/is a better coach than Curley Hallman.

Curley Hallman is the worst hire in big league college football history. There have been some interesting candidates proposed here, Faust (he was 30-20-1 at ND), in particular. However, I'm sticking by my guy - if there is a game to be lost, Curley can lose it.

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And I'm not singling you out, man, this goes for all the people with short memories - Archer SEEMED bad at the time he was let go. However, we hadn't seen anything yet.

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No offense taken. I probably emphasize more that state of the program at the beginning and end of each coach's tenure, and my own personal expectations of each during that time.

I take it you are/were not in Iraq on vacation, so if you are/were serving your county, may God protect you and your fellows, and I hope you and your family have a great Christmas.

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I take it you are/were not in Iraq on vacation, so if you are/were serving your county, may God protect you and your fellows, and I hope you and your family have a great Christmas.

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Thank you. And, in the "It's a small world/small army" chapter, I ran into an old buddy at the PX on Friday. He is a civilian contractor now, but is a retired Louisiana National Guardsman. I didn't really know him before Hurricane Katrina, but we worked together on the relief operations.

He is a graduate of Broadmoor HS and a classmate of Billy Cannon, Jr.

As a uniformed servicemember, I ask those of you in the States to keep our U.S. civilian (who are volunteers, too) workers in your thoughts and prayers, as well. They, along with the international workers, literally do everything for us except carry guns, from life support, maintenance, food, running the contractor-supplied equipment, trash pickup, water, running the PX, running the MWR centers, etc. They are away from their families, too. We absolutely could not do the types of missions for a long as we do them, as well as we do them, without our civilian workforce.

G-d Bless you all, and Merry Christmas.