Re: A "What If" Thread: What if CNS had stayed at LSU? Where would Bama be now?
It's difficult to know because of extraneous factors that cannot be measured. Would Saban have been as motivated as he was to show his failure in the NFL was not "the real Saban" and just an anomaly or is his self-motivation that extreme? Would he have stayed conservative and kept a basic offense because it had been successful rather than opening it up? He had an advantage because he came here after we'd had three losing seasons in four years so people could be tolerant of his changes. Folks are less tolerant of getting away from what has been proven to work and losing games once you're a champion. Besides, isn't the 8-5 Saban of 2002 (which included an absolutely lucky win against Kentucky) the same guy who won the SEC in 2001 and the whole deal in 2003? His track record denoted (at that time) a level of inconsistency that made our hire more risky to outsiders than it seemed to us. Saban was so much better than any hire we had had post-Bryant that the entire fan base rallied like I've never seen - it was like finding actual water in the Sahara rather than an optical illusion.
He would have had another problem at LSU that he doesn't have here - they're just as big on their other sports teams (particularly baseball) and us - for the most part - well, not so much.
But there's a flip side to it all - there's no doubt in my mind we would be talking about 2011 LSU as the greatest team ever. I find it highly unlikely we would have more than one national title at most (and even that would depend totally upon who we hired), but I question whether LSU would have the rep we have now.
He could not have done this at Michigan State. College football is not the NFL. He might have won a championship but it would have been about impossible to win multiple ones.
Then again, I'm sure he would have left LSU for Texas because everybody wants to live in Austin and Texas can buy whatever they want.
But now let's think about the dominoes:
1) Where would Les Miles be? Would anyone have heard of him? My suspicion is that he would be at Michigan, that he would be successful but less so than at LSU.
2) Where would Rich Rodriguez be?
We might not really want to know the answer to this one. I can tell you where he wouldn't be - he would never have been the head coach at Michigan, and we'd probably be off the map via the death penalty.
3) Mike Gundy? I think he's at OSU when Miles goes to Michigan
4) And right now dabaxter (aka Paul Johnson) sits in the lap of luxury off the Caymans living off the huge buyout we gave him after he went 3-9 in 2010 while Auburn was winning the national championship.