The college football season is almost done, which means coaching carousel season is upon us. LSU fired Ed Orgeron, so the Tigers are looking for a new head coach just two years after Coach O led the program to the national championship. LSU is obviously a very attractive job, probably the best available job in the country, given how quickly one can win a national title there. Orgeron and Les Miles are not Hall of Fame-level coaches, yet they both won national championships in Baton Rouge. If LSU can get a rock-star head coach who is clearly several notches better than either Miles or Orgeron was, the Tigers are going to be the equal of Nick Saban and Alabama. They will become an established superpower and a program no one will want to play. Let\u2019s look at the primary candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jimbo Fisher<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Texas A&M head coach used to be the offensive coordinator at LSU. He won a national title at LSU with Nick Saban in 2003. He would be an obvious candidate for the job. It will be hard to pry him away from Texas A&M, because Fisher is making very big money there and has just landed a top five-star recruit. Fisher has every reason to think he can win a national championship at Texas A&M. Why would he try to build a program there and then leave for LSU just when he is beginning to develop a more established presence in College Station? Fisher probably won\u2019t leave A&M for LSU, but the two teams do play this weekend, and Fisher is close friends with LSU Athletic Director Scott Woodward, who hired Fisher at A&M when Woodward was the athletic director for the Aggies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dave Aranda<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The defensive coordinator on the 2019 LSU national championship team would be an obvious fit for the Tigers. He would know the landscape at the school. He has already been exposed to the challenges LSU faces on the recruiting trail and on the field against Nick Saban and Alabama. Aranda\u2019s defenses are strong and fast, and Aranda shows a knack for being able to handle the Xs and Os on the job. Aranda\u2019s experience at other programs, such as Wisconsin and Baylor, gives him a wider sense of what is happening in college football and how to deal with various situations. He would not be overwhelmed by this job. Everything he has done in recent years \u2013 helping LSU win a national championship, then developing Baylor after Matt Rhule left for the NFL \u2013 indicates that Aranda is supremely prepared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Billy Napier<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The coach of the Louisiana Ragin\u2019 Cajuns has been an assistant coach for the two best head coaches in college football, Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney. He is reportedly Florida\u2019s number one target, but LSU could certainly pull him away from the Gators and over to Baton Rouge. This is a big drama in the coaching carousel world right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark Stoops<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The coach of Kentucky, who has won more consistently in Lexington than any other UK coach since Bear Bryant in the early 1950s, is highly regarded in the coaching profession. If he had LSU\u2019s resources and recruiting advantages, it is felt that he could do extremely well, especially on defense. Stoops probably isn\u2019t LSU\u2019s first target, but he should not be written off, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The college football season is almost done, which means coaching carousel season is upon us. LSU fired Ed Orgeron, so…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":13145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaaf"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20152,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20148\/revisions\/20152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}