re: Alleva hired the following at Duke in a similar fashion to Orgeron...

quote:

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I'm sure he told LSU he was a changed man when he interviewed for the job.

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Not to derail the fantastic point of the thread, but this is a good jumping off point to another issue which drives me crazy. This notion of mere saying he's changed and having that matter.

Look...I really dislike the guy. I mean, a lot. I've disliked him from before his stint at ole Miss, and like nearly EVERY LSU fan at the time, laughed at those idiots for hiring him there. It was like we had sent them this big, stupid Cajun Trojan Horse to frick up their program. We universally saw what a terrible hire and coach he was then.

With that said...while I'd never like the guy I could have respected him as a head coach...had he bothered to earn that respect. After his interim gig at SC did not get him the head job, had he gone out and asked his agent to find him a small school where he could build or rebuild a program to actually prove to the college football world that Ole Miss had been a fluke and he was ready to run his own program again and was successful there...he'd have earned some respect. Had he parlayed THAT successful job into a mid-major and built that program into his own image and done well there, he could have PROVEN he was a changed coach. He'd have EARNED interest and interviews from Power 5 big time schools...

And had he done that, while I still would have disliked the man, I'd have had far less issue with Alleva tapping him to replace Miles, because he'd have a PROVEN track record of success AFTER running Ole Miss' program into the ditch.

But that's not what he did, is it? After being passed over by Pat Hayden at SC for the coaching job, he pouted publicly about it and then simply took his coach's whistle and went home. Literally. From there he began schmoozing local radio and TV personalities and making inroads with local high school coaches...still while not a coach anywhere, which in retrospect seems kind of odd, doesn't it? Unless there was a plan...

Then Miles hired him as the DL coach...and my a-hole clenched.

From there, it was a mid-season firing of the most successful coach in LSU's history and suddenly the guy who had not gotten a gig after his 6-2 interim run at SC and ZERO head coaching experience since then was interiming LSU. And even THEN it seemed unthinkable that he'd be given the reigns and most assumed he'd have to nearly run the table to even be considered. And then that didn't happen...and Alleva hired his arse anyway.

So...instead of ACTUALLY changing and proving he had become a better coach, all he had to do to get our Top 10 job was to "SAY" he had...and that seems to have been enough for both or idiot AD and a large portion of our fan base.