The 2007 Official College Football Thread

The Tigers’ 17-10 victory over Georgia in 2003 seemed like a big win, but we soon found out LSU was merely lucky. Cadillac Williams and Auburn were going to roll over LSU, but after the purple-and-gold Tigers won 31-7, we learned Auburn was overrated. After losing 17-14 to LSU a month later, Ole Miss was found to be overrated too. LSU pounded Georgia 34-13 in the SEC Championship Game, making it 2-for-2 against the Bulldogs, but that merely put the Tigers into the Really Big Game.

Against Oklahoma, a team described most of the season as the best team in college football history, LSU’s 21-14 victory for the BCS national championship wasn’t so much a big game as a backdrop for controversy. To counter the perception that computers put Oklahoma into the title game rather than eventual AP champion USC, the BCS formula changed to give more weight to humans, to poll voters. You know, the ones who decide what’s a big game and what isn’t.

Fast-forward to Miles’ first season at LSU. His Tigers were “lucky” to beat Auburn. LSU later won at Alabama, winning in overtime against a Crimson Tide team that entered the game 10-0, ranked No. 4 and in the national championship conversation. Was that a big win? No, because Alabama lost its next game to Auburn. That proved, of course, the Tide had been overrated. Never mind that LSU let all the air out of Alabama’s season a week earlier.

LSU played a No. 9-ranked Miami team in the Peach Bowl and won 40-3. Big win? Nice win, but let’s face it: the Hurricanes quit, and they and coach Larry Coker were obviously on the downslide already, right?

Last season LSU lost to the national champion and the only team to defeat the national champion. You know the circumstances, but we’ll tell you later the real reason those were “godawful ugly losses.” LSU later won at No. 8 Tennessee with a clutch comeback. The Tigers won at No. 5 Arkansas, beating a team led by the Heisman Trophy runner-up. Believed to be the first college football team to play all of its road games against top-10 teams, LSU went 2-2 against those teams. Just one problem. Can you guess? The two teams LSU beat, Tennessee and Arkansas, didn’t finish in the top 10. Obviously, they were overrated.

Memo to the college football world: LSU at its best this decade makes everybody look overrated. The Tigers ended the Heisman candidacies of Georgia’s David Greene and Ole Miss’ Eli Manning in 2003. They smothered Heisman winner Jason White of Oklahoma.

None of them looked as good as advertised against LSU. There must be a reason. LSU beat Arizona 45-3 last season, and the victory was dismissed as more evidence of a “soft” LSU nonconference. There appeared to be no significant adjustment of perceptions when Arizona later beat No. 8 Cal and No. 25 Washington State.
Clearly, Cal and Washington State had been overrated. There is no other explanation.
Or is there?

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