Firm grasp of LSU’s next coach

Published 6:22 am Sunday, March 12, 2017

I’m sure it’s comforting to know that LSU and Athletic Director Joe Alleva will enlist the services of a search firm to find a new basketball coach.

Whew.

You never know when the answer to LSU’s hoop maladies might be hidden out in the mountains or under a rock somewhere.

So leave no stone unturned while looking for a replacement for Johnny Jones.

Not that LSU is breaking new ground here.

It’s the “in” thing do with athletic departments on the prowl these days.

Everybody does it.

It came to light earlier this week that LSU and Alleva used a search firm in its quest to get a new football coach in November.

The story in AL.com reported that LSU didn’t provide financial details of the arrangement. But the same story reported that the University of Alabama spent $106,700 with the same firm, and Bama wasn’t even looking for something as important as a football coach — just an athletic director.

So for LSU football, an outfit called Turnkey Search came all the way down from New Jersey, looked far and wide, checked under every couch cushion for billable hours and — what do you know? — they found a coach right there within easy tailgating distance of Tiger Stadium.

It was right across the railroad tracks, in fact, and Ed Orgeron even had a bona fide Cajun accent.

Thank goodness, LSU brought in outside help for its nationwide search.

Oh, it wasn’t quite as easy as double-checking to see who was sitting in the head coach’s (interim) office.

No apparently, if the internet can be believed, they tossed out some other usable names for the Tigers’ perusal.

Let’s see, there was Jimbo Fisher and apparently Tom Herman.

Evidently the search firm had been reading the newspapers and keeping up with college football.

You’d think it would be pretty hard to hide really good football coaches. Same for basketball.

LSU fans don’t know enough about college basketball — or care, apparently — to know who the rising stars are, or maybe a proven veteran disgruntled with his current gig.

So maybe a search firm will prove a wise investment this time.

“They were fantastic — a huge help,” Alleva told AL.com. “They have years of football experience and know all the coaches and their agents. They were invaluable.”

What? Alleva didn’t know about Orgeron?

But, OK, you might miss something.

Still, what will Alleva tell the search firm?

Apparently he won’t be looking for a good “fit.”

“The word ‘fit’ is a joke,” Alleva said at Friday’s anticlimactic news conference to announce Jones’ firing. “What’s a fit? If you look at Johnny Jones, you would think he was a perfect fit.”

True enough.

Jones was a no-brainer perfect fit, one of the Tigers’ own as a player and assistant coach with ties to the glory days of Dale Brown.

He’d had success at a North Texas. And everybody liked him. Still do.

Five years later, LSU had a historically bad basketball team and couldn’t give away tickets to the Maravich Assembly Center.

Yet Trent Johnson, who Jones replaced, was a good coach. But he was not, most agreed, a good “fit,” at least not at LSU, if anywhere in the Southeastern Conference.

Hence, the search for the perfect fit with Jones.

So, when it comes to fitness, it appears you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

So where does LSU go now?

If the past is any guide, money won’t be an issue.

But the LSU basketball coaching job is a fickle gig right now.

True, you’ve got to find somebody who can recruit and coach them up.

That’s a given.

Maybe just as important for LSU, however, the Tigers have to find somebody who get fans excited about the sport again.

For all the fan base’s familiarity and initial buzz with Jones, he never managed that once his teams started playing.

It’s a tough sell in these parts. It took years even for a master salesman like Dale Brown.

Maybe that guy is out there.

But the search firm has its work cut out for it.

l

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com