I will never understand why Alabama is pilloried for having 'unrealistic expectations' of a football coach and LSU gets a free pass. Look at the following:
LSU COACHES
Charles McClendon 1979
Bo Rein (killed in plane crash, never coached a game)
Jerry Stovall 1980-83
Bill Arnsparger 1984-86
Mike Archer 1987-90
Curley Hallman 1991-94
Gerry DiNardo 1995-99
Nick Saban 2000-04
Les Miles 2005-15
Eight head coaches, one never coached a game, 2 national championships, ten losing seasons (none since 1999)
ALABAMA COACHES
Paul Bryant 1979-82
Ray Perkins 1983-86
Bill Curry 1987-89
Gene Stallings 1990-96
Mike DuBose 1997-2000
Dennis Franchione 2001-2002
Mike Price (never coached a game)
Mike Shula 2003-2006
Nick Saban 2007-2015
Nine head coaches, one never coached a game, 5 national championships, six losing seasons (none since 2006). No, Kines filling in one game does not count.
So in the same basic time frame, we've had ONE more coach than LSU did. And THREE of those coaches - Perkins, Curry, and Franchione - all left at the ZENITH of their popularity for other jobs. Keep in mind that Bill Arnsparger did the same thing - the guy won 2 SEC titles (technically) in 3 years and bolted for the Florida AD job back when that was not what it is now.
Yet our reputation nationally has long been that we chew coaches up and spit them out and have 'unrealistic expectations' and LSU doesn't get even 1/10 the criticism yet is far better described by those words than we are. Of all the coaches we've gone through only THREE - DuBose, Price, and Shula - were fired. DuBose technically resigned but he was gonna get canned anyway. Price gave the school no choice, and Shula's three losing seasons in four years sealed the deal for him.
LSU fired Stovall just one year after he was Coach of the Year in an internal struggle and hired - hard as it seems to believe now - a guy with a 7-23 record to replace him (Arnsparger). Archer (like DuBose) resigned but was gonna be fired, so let's call it a firing. They fired Curley Hallman after only four years (most likely due to his DuBose level incompetence in the 1994 Auburn game - if you don't know what I'm talking about, look it up because it's insane). And they fired DiNardo. LSU hired and fired FIVE coaches between 1979-1999, lost another to death, and watched another one get the Hell out of Dodge on the fastest train he could find.
And now it's Les Miles on the hot seat (if the BR Advocate is to be believed).
WHO is it with unrealistic expectations again?
(During the same time frame, Auburn has fired Doug Barfield, watched Pat Dye resign rather than be fired, ditto Terry Bowden and Tommy Tuberville, fired their only national championship winning coach of the last half century less than two years after he won the title........Auburn has, in essence, fired FIVE coaches in the same time frame.
Again - who has unrealistic expectations?)
