quote:
Its no secret why the series ended...

Sept. 14, 1991, College Station, W, 45-7
Sept. 5, 1992, Baton Rouge, W, 31-22
Sept. 4, 1993, College Station W, 24-0
Sept. 3, 1994, Baton Rouge, W, 18-13
Sept. 2, 1995, College Station, W, 33-17

Joe Dean was our AD then. Any LSU fan with a memory that goes back that far can confirm that Joe Dean didn't give one flying f*** about whether we won or lost football games. He only cared about money. The problem was that he never saw the financial opportunity that WINNING presented, and was only about cutting costs. So, he'd go out and hire the cheapest bargain basement coach he could find, the football team would go 4-7, attendance would fall, revenues would fall, and Dean would be patting himself on the back for all the money he saved by hiring a cheap coach. We only got Saban because then-chancellor Mark Emmert basically told Dean to go sit in a corner and keep his mouth shut while he (Emmert) found us a football coach. Emmert, of course, realized the value of a winning program, spent what was then a lot of money to hire Saban, and the rest is history.

After the SEC went to an 8-game conference schedule in 1992, Dean tried to cancel or buy out any game he could that wasn't a home-only cupcake, and a cheap payout one at that. If he could have found a way to make money off of a home and home with A&M, he would have gladly watched us lose 70 in a row. He saw a way to get out of some road games that he could replace with New Mexico State or other such cupcakes, so he went for it. That he (according to A&M) withheld whatever buyout fee he was supposed to pay is right up his alley.

Joe Dean actually used to brag about the fact that, when he was running Converse, he was able to cut costs and avoid bankruptcy when sales plummeted by 80% (or whatever it was). He never seemed to realize that his JOB was to keep sales from plummeting 80% in the first place, but he was too short sighted to realize the marketing and sponsorship deals that Reebok, Nike, etc. were spending a ton of money on would actually make them many times as much, at the expense of short-sighted Dean-led Converse.

For every complaint I've ever had about Skip Bertman and Joe Alleva (and I've had quite a few), they were both a million times better than Joe Dean.

But anyway, to your point, no, Joe Dean would never cancel a series for anything to do with performance on the field. Performance on the field was the furthest thing from his mind at all times.