Don't mean to anger anyone with this but I have a question regarding Saban.

I believe Skip Bertman, as the AD at that time, hired Saban from Michigan State.

I think I'm correct saying that.

Joe Dean was AD. After Saban was hired Skip stepped down as BB Coach and became AD,

Skip was baseball coach until 2001

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The call came around 7:30 on the night before Thanksgiving, as Gil Brandt, a former Vice President of player personnel for the Dallas Cowboys who had been tapped to help out with the Louisiana State search process, sat in his backyard on a pleasant late fall night.

Nick Saban, the Michigan State coach who was smarting from a Bowl Game that went to Michigan over his Spartans and a slow-to-come bonus but at least according to Brandt not searching for a new gig at the time, almost immediately said he would be interested.

“He said ‘look, I think I’ve done a pretty good job here at Michigan State,” Brandt, who now works for NFL Media, remembered in a conversation with For The Win. “I’ve beaten Ohio State, I’ve beaten Penn State, I’ve beaten Michigan and sometimes it’s time to move on.”

According to Brandt, who said he has known Saban from when he was a graduate assistant at Ohio State, then asked if he’d be interested in the LSU position, which was open after Gerry DiNardo was fired earlier that month.

“He said, ‘yes I’m prepared to say I’m interested in the job’, without asking what it paid,” Brandt said. “Without asking anything about money, about years (on the contract).”

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Saban and his wife Terry flew down less than two days after Brandt called and together, the duo was impressive. Terry Saban, Brandt said, immediately hit it off with then-LSU president Mark Emmert’s wife as her husband impressed LSU officials and trustees. “Whenever you talk to Nick you can’t be anything but impressed,” Brandt said. “He’s very smart — he can talk about politics and banking and the Louisiana Purchase and everything. He’s just a guy that he’s never unprepared I would imagine that in a matter of 24 hours he probably did a thorough search as you could do (on LSU).”

By the time Saban left to go back to Michigan on Saturday, the deal was all but done.

Meanwhile, back in East Lansing, Mich. reports had been leaking out that Saban had been in talks with LSU. But without Twitter and the 24 hour news cycle, Michigan State officials led by trustee Joel Ferguson, according to the Wall Street Journal, were surprised to find Nick Saban at home without his wife. Saban, according to that report, denied that he had taken the job and said only that LSU had reached out to him.

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Read the Rest here

Saban and his agent Sexton are data-nerds. They knew that LSU was a sleeping giant on the rise, and that Lousiana (along with the DC/Maryland area, South Carolina and Mississippi) had the best per-capita NFL caliber football players in the country.

They also knew that, along with Nebraska and Ohio State, that Louisiana was one of 3 football crazy states with only 1 true big-time football program.

This had Sexton and Saban looking at LSU real hard, as based on these 2 factors, it made LSU one of the top-3 best places in all of college football to be a coach - assuming you could recruit and retain most of the in-state Talent. The bonus was the proximity to Texas and the rest of the deep south, making recruiting even better.

Yes, this is a lot of info that seems off-point, but SABAN AND SEXTON were among very few who actually knew this back in the late 90's, and among even fewer who strategically acted on the information.

So, Sexton contacted LSU and Mark Emmert. Mark Emmert jumped on it, and Saban came in and took over the reigns from a fairly good base of recruiting from DeNardo, and his confidence and knowledge of recruiting (along with his defensive ability, process orientation and NFL style discipline and work ethics/expectations) materialized into the success of the early 2000's....

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I was just genuinely curious as to how LSU landed Saban

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It started, for Saban, in 1995 when he came to Louisiana to play LSU in the Shreveport bowl game. A first year LSU Gerry DiNardo, taking over after six straight losing years, hammered a fifth year at Michigan State Saban in that bowl game.

That kind of thing stays in Saban's brain.

LSU had a opening fives years later, Michigan St. had a good record five years later, Michigan State was playing games with Saban, Saban decided to bail, and he remembered what a first year LSU coach had been able to do to him and his team.

I remember him being something of a surprise hire. He wasn't on too may people's radar at the time.

Mark Emmert,then Chancellor of LSU, now Prez of the NCAA, hired Saban away from Michigan State, where he was their HC for 5 seasons,his record there was 34-24-1 with his best season there 9-2 for Sparty.

Saban didn't become a national name until LSU, and the success here.