Hell, you don't have to go back to his tenure at Duke. Just look at what he did with the LSU basketball program.

He hires Trent Johnson, which, in year one looked like a great hire. Johnson had success at two other stops (Nevada and Stanford) and even won the SEC in year 1. After that it was a complete free fall. The Johnson hire COULD have been forgivable except when after 3 years of mostly losing basketball it became clear Johnson wasn't going to work out at LSU Joe didn't pull the plug. He waited until Johnson himself left in early April, thus putting LSU behind the 8 ball in its search for a new coach. After 10 days he hires a guy he could have hired within 10 seconds (Jones), someone for whom there was literally no national demand outside of LSU.

Jones coaches two seasons. Improves LSU's program, but still fails to make the NCAAT. So what does Joe do? Give him a raise and 2-3 year extension on a 5 year contract!! Why? To keep the wolves at bay from trying to steal Jones?

The Jones waste of time became 100% clear at the end of the 15-16 season when he couldn't even make the NCAAT with a loaded team. Joe could and should have let Jones go then. BUT, due to the stupid and unnecessary extension given a few years earlier, it was economically more burdensome to do that...which allowed the program to completely bottom out in 16-17.

THANK GOD Wade (a) reached out to LSU wanting the job and (b) Eddie Nunez lobbied hard for him. Otherwise, Joe was likely poised to offer the job to Rick Pitino. Once Rick said "no", Joe would have run to Houston to steal Mike Davis away from Texas Southern and proudly had a press conference once again touting a guy no one else wanted.

Of course, that would have been only the third time he had done that at LSU seeing that he made a "Johnny Jones" hire in Orgeron. But rest assured, he had LSU's best interests in mind by refusing to get into a bidding war for Herman, only to get into a bidding war with himself to overpay Ed.

Bob Broadhead wrote a book following his time as LSU's AD about hiring two successful coaches and the zoo that surrounded LSU athletics. Joe could write a book about how to fail upwards.