People who aren’t LSU fans and don’t know the history of the program don’t understand why LSU fans are excited about this hire.
Kelly is the most successful coach the LSU program has hired in its history, on the day he was hired. Given the benefit of hindsight, Saban was the best hire LSU ever made, but no one knew at his time of hiring what type of success lay ahead for Saban. And no one knows what Saban’s career would have looked like had LSU not pulled him into the talent rich SEC to start with.
LSU was a fairly successful program from the late 1950s until late 1970s, winning a National Championship in 1958 and competing again for an NC a few years later. When Paul Dietzel left as LSU’s HC to take the HC position at Army he left it in the hands of his trusted assistant Charles McClendon. ‘Cholly Mac’ as he was known, guided the LSU program for the next 18 seasons. In that time frame he only had one losing season and took LSU to 13 bowl games compiling a 7-6 bowl record. While not National Championship contenders during that stretch, LSU was a very successful CFB program by the era’s standards. Remember, this was the era of Bear Bryant at Alabama so that’s what C Mac competed against on a yearly basis.
When C Mac retired the LSU program went into some tumultuous years and eventually spiraled out of control. LSU hired Bo Rein from NC State to replace C Mac but he never coached a game because he died in a plane crash. LSU hired Louisiana native Jerry Stovall as an emergency hire and he had mixed success and failure in his four years. LSU brought in Bill Arsparnger from the Miami Dolphins to stabilize the program and he met with immediate success, two Sugar Bowl victories in three seasons. Unfortunately Arnsparnger was frustrated with the way LSU athletics was being run at the time and Florida hired him away as their AD. Next came Mike Archer, an assistant on the staff and only 34 years old. Archer was hired over potential candidates like Steve Spurrier and Mack Brown, among other (can’t remember them all). LSU was doing things on the cheap. Archer had success his first two seasons then had back to back losing seasons. After Archer was forced to resign LSU brought in Curly Hallman from Southern Miss. Hallman had had success there with Brett Favre as his QB. Hallman was a complete dumpster fire at LSU. After Hallman was forced out LSU hired Gerry DiNardo from Vanderbilt, again, another cheap hire. DiNardo found success at first and then quickly returned LSU to a dumpster fire again. Finally LSU hired Saban in 1999. LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert directed the AD Joe Dean to pay Nick Saban an (at the time) astronomical salary of $1 million per year to become LSU's next HC. That singular decision changed the direction of LSU football for the next (going on) three decades.
Long rant but it gives you a little background as to why Tiger fans are excited about the CBK hire. Stable program from the late 50s to the late 70s. Up and down program through the 80s. Complete dumpster fire in the 1990s. Some of this was due to pure happenstance but a lot of it was LSU being cheap and hiring sub par coaches.