I disagree. It is unreasonable to “expect” it. Not unreasonable to hope for it or think it’s a possibility. Flipping the entire staff and roster makes it very difficult, even in this modern era, no matter how much money you spend. Hypothetically, the players and coaches could have taken exactly half of what we paid for them. Same roster. Same staff. Or they could have taken twice the amount we invested. Doubled our spend. Still, same roster, same staff. The amount of money we spent is arbitrary. Not to the folks who paid it, but the roster is the roster, the staff is the staff. Whether we paid $1 million or $100 million doesn’t change that we are who we are.

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Some of y’all seem to be stuck in the past on how cfb once was.

Some, sure. But not many. There’s many more of you who think the present is something that it’s not quite yet. Such as:

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Teams turn it around and make the cfp in one year all the time now.

They do? Who are all these teams with 1st year coaches who completely turn it around after firing a coach and the next year make the playoffs with a new one? I can think of one—Indiana in ‘24. They had a cake schedule that year. And Cignetti brought 13 James Madison guys with him that were integral parts to that team. And averaged over 23 years old.

Because of the timing of everything and Ole Miss making the semifinals, Lane only brought 5 Ole Miss guys with him, I think. A really good 2nd year WR, probably the best edge in college football, an underclassman guard who is our 4th guard and only sees the field in jumbo packages, a really good middle linebacker, and a punter, who has been very underwhelming. So only 3 really good players that are contributing. Most coaches take way more.

And it’s always cheaper to keep someone on your roster than it is to bring somebody in. And since we overturned almost the entire offensive line group (kept them only Moore, Davis, and Thomas, I think), the entire WR room except Phillip Wright who was lost for the season in the 2nd or 3rd game, the entire QB room, having to throw a ton of money at Sam Leavett, who I still like more than most, because of the scarcity of really good QBs in the portal, 2 DTs, 2 TEs, 2 starting DEs, the best safety in the portal, etc…that shite adds up quick. And most of the best players in CFB still stay at their current schools, that scarcity factor comes into play and you have to pay guys more than they’d be worth if it was a completely open market where everybody entered the portal every year.

So not every $40 million roster—if that’s our number—is created the same. I think it’s pretty clear Georgia has a better roster than us, for example. Kirby uses the portal, but much more sparingly. Because he doesn’t have to. He’s built a winning culture there where they are great at evaluating guys, developing them, and getting them to stay. So their roster may have only cost $30 million. Just because we may have spent an extra $10 million, doesn’t make our roster inherently better. We have mostly new guys—especially on offense—who were not developed in our program for 3 or 4 years, who have not been in our system for 3 or 4 years. That matters.

Alabama may have the 2nd or 3rd best roster in the country. I’m sure it cost less than ours. But DeBoer is in his 3rd season there. And he didn’t replace a guy who got fired. He replaced the best CFB coach in history. So he inherited a bunch of really good players who’d been in Saban’s program getting developed for several years. And he brought some of his guys from Washington, who had just made the CFP Final. They’ve been good since he got there, but it’s taken until Year 3 to build a roster/program that can seriously compete for the NC, despite making the playoffs last year at 10-3.

Texas A&M, who is likely one of the teams you’re referencing with quick turnarounds after throwing a ton of money at roster and coaching staffs went 8-5 (5-3) in Elko’s 1st year. A whopping 1-game turnaround from the year before when they went 7-6 (4-4) and fired Jimbo. It wasn’t until his 2nd season that they had a CFP level team. And they started 11-0 before losing at Texas 27-17, then losing AT HOME in the 1st round of the CFP to eventual runner up Miami. Where they scored a whopping 3 points, losing 10-3. But not all those 11 wins were impressive. They were very lucky to escape some. Beat Notre Dame 41-40 on the road. Good win, but could easily have gone the other way. The next week they barely beat a bad Auburn team—at Kyle Field—16-10. Escaped a terrible Arkansas team on the road 45-42. Barely beat a bad South Carolina team 31-30, again, AT KYLE FIELD.
Credit to them for winning the close games, but that was an expensive roster that took a lot of luck to get into the playoffs, where they were really not a serious threat. And again, it was Elko’s 2nd season.

So tell me again, how easy it is for a 1st year coach to turn it around in the SEC? Especially now that we’ve added a 9th game. Which would be terrible even if that 9th game was played on a neutral field. But it’s not, so the home/away splits will always be uneven. And we just happened to draw the 5 road games in Lane’s 1st year. Sure, the 2 toughest games are at home, but it’s still a grind to play 9 SEC games with 5 on the road that takes a cumulative toll. Which was always going to be tough for this LSU team due to the lack of experienced depth. Lane specifically focused on guys with multiple years of eligibility left. Which was not a “push-all-your-chips-to-the-table,” 1-year strategy. He was building for the long-term. Part of that was obvious when we counted so much on 3 freshman DLs to play so much. Which is a position most guys don’t really elevate at until their 3rd season. But we got lucky that Geralds came in looking like a potential All-American out the gate. Which is an extreme outlier and can never be counted on. But with Weeks out, he’s been our 2nd best DL behind Princewill, and in the top 4 of our best defensive players altogether(I’d throw Benefield and Pickett in there). But if Geralds doesn’t play like he’s been, the 2nd and 3rd levels don’t matter nearly as much. (Or matter more, depending on how you look at it).

So, do I think this team could have made the CFP? Absolutely. Do I think they could have even won it? Yes. But ONLY if everything went exactly right, guys took big leaps, hit on all the portal guys, freshmen came in ready to play, AND, most importantly of all, if we had really good injury luck all season. Which we have not, losing both our #7s in the 3rd week. And I think Lane felt/feels the exact same way. COULD we have made and even won the CFP? Yes. But only if everything went right. And it didn’t. And you can hear it in his pressers when he talks about the injuries so much. And depth. He knew this roster wasn’t ready for the grind of a 9-game SEC schedule and a 15 or 16 game overall schedule. Not without incredible injury luck. Which we, obviously, have not had.