re: If Dinardo would have fired Tepper..

To answer the OP question, no. Even the staff of 1997 managed to lose three games inexplicably, to lesser talent. We were good for an occasional Atlanta run, that was probably the ceiling.

Not enough emphasis on facilities at the time. This was a hallmark of Saban and Emmert. Our recruiting was never going to be at the level Saban brought it to. Guys like Clayton and Spears would have never gone to LSU... Clayton's said as much. The state was never locked down, and for some reason LSU seemed to have trouble recruiting many of the NOLA high schools... one poster previously mentioned Ed Reed, he was signed by a Miami coaching staff that arrived the same year (1995) that DiNardo's did at LSU, with a team on probation. Saban was finally able to overcome that and find more recruiting success there. The large number of players who didn't qualify, as mentioned before, depleted our roster depth noticeably.

Also, people forget the out-of-state blue chip recruits we've signed under Saban and Miles, integral to our success in the 2000s. Louisiana talent, while a huge advantage, wasn't enough by itself to meet all our needs- this was the final missing piece. Addai, Russell, Bowe, Flynn, Patrick Peterson, etc... to my knowledge we never signed a single player of that caliber from out of state during the 1990s.