Congrats to Bertman and O'keefe for the above avg program

In December of 1999, Mark Emmert was the chancellor at LSU. He changed the landscape of hiring college football coaches when he hired Nick Saban away from Michigan State for 1.2 million dollars. Saban became the 3rd highest paid coach in the country before he ever put on a whistle at LSU. Within 2 years LSU had won the SEC title and a BCS bowl win in the Sugar Bowl. Two years after that came another SEC title and the national championship.

Mark Emmert left LSU, and Sean O'Keefe was hired to replace him. At the end of 2004, Nick Saban left LSU try the NFL. The two men in charge of hiring his replacement was O'Keefe and athletic director Skip Bertman. Instead of following Emmert's lead, and going out to buy the best coach available in the country, these two guys announced that the new coach would not be getting "Nick Saban money". After Nick Saban built a powerhouse program, we offered an above average salary to the next applicants for the job, and we got an above average coach. So O'keefe and Bertman settled for Less. Unexplicably, when it looked like Les Miles was about to be hired away to Michigan, O'keefe and Bertman opened up the pocket book to overpay for the production that LSU had received (at that point there was no SEC title, and only a longshot chance at a national title).

After 3 years of winning with great talent, LSU has had back to back regular seasons of 7-5 and 9-3. In the same time frame, Florida went out and bought the best coach available. Alabama also broke the bank to hire Saban back to college. The back to back regular season of those two teams are a combined 24-0 and 23-1.

Congrats on the above average program O'Keefe and Bertman, but at least we didn't have to pay "Nick Saban" money when we hired our coach in January of 2005.