re: Why is it important to Bama fans that Lanning wasn't offered the job? But we know he was

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Lanning is a good coach and I would have been ok with him but why is it stupid to go after the guy he couldn't beat and who made it to the natty while Lanning watched the playoffs on tv? Just because he came from Georgia doesn't mean Lanning is better than Deboer.

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It isn't stupid at all if you couldn't get Lanning. I said I would go after him before Sark, Lane, Norvell, etc.

Reasons why Lanning was the best candidate:

1. He can recruit. You would know this. You don't really know this about DeBoer and while Saban's rebuilding Bama into a power will make it a name in recruiting, the recruiting rank of classes pulled in by Bama from 2002-2006 ranked on average well outside of the top ten. There is no given that the name Alabama will pull in a top ten class on its own.

2. He's won 22 games in his first two years of coaching. While many may think winning at Oregon is easy, you have to go back to Chip Kelly to find someone who has done it better. He's been better than the 3 coaches preceding him and he's never had any head coaching experience at all before taking on the job.

3. Lanning's first two years at Oregon as a new coach are just as impressive, if not more so, than DeBoer at Sioux Falls. If guys who won big at those lower levels were no doubt great coaches, you would see more of them hired and promoted to big schools. DeBoer and Kelly are outliers in guys who won at those levels and worked their way up to success at the FCS P5 level. Leipold also has done well, but there are a lot of them who have been promoted that didn't fair as well with the promotion.