LSU got what it paid for in Johnny Jones

One thing I’m learning more and more as an adult is that we, as people, get what we pay for in most of our financial decisions.

Sure, I love to save money and have more of it in my pocket. Who doesn’t? But 99 times out of 100, things in life that are more expensive are usually more expensive for a reason, and that’s because they’re made with better quality materials.

There’s a reason why Nike shoes cost $80, but the shoes at Dollar General cost $20.

The Nike shoes are generally far more comfortable and will typically last longer, which means that over the long haul, the increased spending in the present will end up as a net gain over the duration of the purchase.

I can feel you guys wondering what the heck any of this has to do with sports, so now, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of the issue.

The LSU basketball team is a wreck. They’re far and away one of the worst teams, in the SEC – an embarrassing situation for Tigers inept athletic director Joe Alleva, who claims to be a basketball guy.

Fans like to blame head coach Johnny Jones for the issues and heck, he’s not a bad target for the criticism, because the Tigers are terribly coached.

But for me, I’d prefer to blame Alleva and the LSU fans for the team’s struggles, and I think a simple case of Economics 101 will give a quality explanation why.

For me, this situation is about dollars and cents. LSU decided to go cheap in funding its basketball program, and now they have to live with being defeated by teams who are more invested in their basketball successes.

Johnny Jones is bad, yes.

I am not questioning that.

If it were up to me, he probably wouldn’t have ever been hired.

But hell, if it were up to me, he also would have been fired after missing the NCAA Tournament last season with Ben Simmons on the roster.

But for as bad as Jones is, I never fully understood why LSU fans ever expected anything better than mediocre from the coach.

Jones is paid just north of $1 million per season to lead LSU. To you or I, that’s an incredible sum of money.

But in the Southeastern Conference head coaching hierarchy, that’s peanuts – a figure that ranks Jones near the bottom of the conference in terms of his salary.

To be fair, football coach Ed Orgeron is also paid cheaply compared to his counterparts, but LSU offsets that by spending more on assistant coaches than any other school in the country, which allows the Tigers to have a proverbial dream-team staff around the head coach.

But that’s not the case in basketball. Jones isn’t paid well, and his assistants aren’t exactly getting compensated with high-dollar offers, either.

Figures show the LSU basketball program is one of the most inexpensive programs in the SEC – a program that is dwarfed by Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina and the other powerhouses around the country.

So my question to LSU fans today is – how does anyone expect to win if no effort financially is being put toward making that a realistic goal?

Jones stinks. I concede to you that he’s terrible.

But for the price LSU is paying, who will the university get that will be better?

Right now, LSU is buying $5 steaks over and over, but are confused as to why their meat is less tender than the $50 steaks that are being enjoyed around the rest of the country.

It doesn’t work that way, Joe Alleva. That’s not how things work in college basketball.

If LSU wants to win, then it needs to take itself seriously and treat its program like it belongs on the top tier.

The Tigers will never care as much about basketball as Kentucky and others, but is it really too much to ask to spend around as much as Alabama, Auburn or others who have splurged to get big-name coaches into their programs in recent years?

For an athletic department that is as self-sufficient as LSU’s, I don’t think that would be too much to ask.

So in the coming weeks, I expect LSU to continue to struggle.

And I do think Alleva will cave to message board pressure and fire Jones at the season’s end – if not even sooner than that.

But to truly solve the problem, fans need to look deeper than the head coach and point at the entire process involved.

LSU basketball isn’t good.

But they’re not good because they’re not invested in themselves – not to the level of others in their conference.

Until that changes and the Tigers throw a little money around, expect every coach to be like Jones – someone who is incapable of doing the job to the highest level that fans demand. •

Johnny Jones

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