To Be a Lover

LSU beat Alabama yesterday, 46-41.

I still can’t completely wrap my mind around it, but it was a great game–I was never relaxed, from the opening kick-off until I realized LSU could simply run out the clock and that the game was actually, in fact,  already over, if not officially–and both teams acquitted themselves well. LSU played exceptionally well; at half-time I said out loud in disbelief, “we’re ahead of Alabama 33-13 at half-time?”

In my wildest dreams of LSU beating Alabama again, I never dreamed it would go down the way it did yesterday afternoon. Like I said, I can’t wrap my mind around it.  But, as I say, to be the best you have to beat the best, and Alabama is the gold standard of college football, and has been since 2008. You just don’t get better than the Alabama program–historically or recently. Their recent dynasty has pulled them ahead of other gold standard programs–USC, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Texas, Michigan, Notre Dame–because you simply cannot argue with the success they’ve had. Every national champion since 2008 has had to beat Alabama to get there–or it was Alabama. Every national champion from the SEC since 2009 has been from the western division–and if you go back another two years, LSU won it in 2007 (Florida won in 2006 and 2008).

And it looks like, at long last, we might have another shot at it again this year.

GEAUX TIGERS!

Needless to say, I literally got nothing done after the game was over. I didn’t read anything, didn’t write anything, didn’t clean anything. I just kind of stayed in my easy chair, scrolling through social media while the Tennessee-Kentucky game played in the background, to see the reactions to the game and the videos of the team plane landing in Baton Rouge to an enormous crowd–which even lined the road cheering as the team busses took them back to campus from the airport. We all are, of course, huge fans of the underdog, and what is this year’s LSU team is not a team of underdogs? No one wanted running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire; too small to play in the SEC, they said. He was phenomenal last night–that final first down that iced the game once and for all was an incredible display of running as he dragged almost the entire Alabama defense the entire ten yards to put the game away once and for all. The transfer quarterback who didn’t get the starting job at Ohio State; now almost has a lock on the Heisman Trophy and has already broken most, if not all, of the quarterback records at LSU.

And of course, Coach O–the interim coach who finally got the job after two bigger names turned it down; the coach LSU “settled” for, who went on to lose to Troy in his first full season as head coach. Remember that? It was just two years ago, and everyone wrote Coach O for dead that season. Even this year, Coach O was “on the hot seat”, according to every sports journalistic out there–the Cajun home-state coach with the gravelly voice; who wages a battle at every press conference with the closed-captioning. And yet, here LSU sits, 9-0, ranked Number One, having just gotten the Alabama monkey off its back for the first time since the 2011 season and suddenly is everyone’s favorite for the college football play-offs.

After the Texas game, when LSU won in Austin, I said to Paul, “how cool would it be for LSU and Ohio State–Joe’s two teams–to meet for the national championship, and how fitting would it be to write, as Joe’s final act as a college football player, to beat the team that wouldn’t start him to win the national title?”

It seemed far-fetched at the time, but now? It’s definitely possible.

LSU has to keep its head in the game though–there are three games left in the conference (Ole Miss, Arkansas, Texas A&M), and then the conference title game–most likely against Georgia; even if Georgia loses to Auburn they’ll win the East–and should Georgia win out, and LSU win that game…it will be the fifth time they’ve beaten a Top Ten ranked team this season.

Sorry if you’re not a football fan, but I am aglow still this morning, and that glow will probably last for me a little while…but the Saints are playing the hated Falcons today at noon, so I’ve got to get ready for that game, too.

GEAUX TIGERS!

If you could have turned the joy in Louisiana last night into pure energy, we could have powered the entire country last night.

Thank you, and bless you, boys.

JEAUX BURREAUX FOR THE HEISMAN!!!!!!