re: Lighting a candle - IF the AD were to be replaced?

Del Conte is at TCU, not Texas Tech.

But he's one of the best in the game.

Another guy who would have to get a phone call is Jim Phillips at Northwestern, who's hired excellent coaches and is building monster facility upgrades and has them competing at a lot higher level than they've previously done.

There was a Sports Illustrated piece a month ago on who the best AD's are. Here's the link to it.

If you're going to hire an "LSU guy" for the job, the one with the resume that makes sense is Herb Vincent seeing as though he's moved up to the #2 job at the SEC office and he would give you some actual stroke with the league that you have never, ever had, not to mention Herb is actually intelligent and knows how to communicate things in a manner where LSU doesn't come off looking like freaking idiots (the Florida game affair last year, for instance). Whether he can hire coaches or not I don't know, though.