LSU Dominates Oregon, Should Be Number One Team in the Country
ARLINGTON, TEXAS
LSU came to Texas and did what LSU does -- the fans drank heavily and the team won a big football game. Saturday morning at a downtown Dallas hotel, a bellhop threw up his arms in dismay. His luggage cart had been commandeered by LSU fans -- instead of luggage the cart was loaded down with beer, coolers, and liquor. "I don't care what they put on these things as long as they tip," he said. Twenty minutes later the bellhop was singing a different tune: "We can't move any luggage in," he said, "because the LSU fans keep bringing in more beer."
In a hotel bar my friend Shekhar, an East Coaster in town for the game who spent the previous weekend in Boston, turned to me after what seemed like the thousandth gorgeous LSU girl in a row had walked past, "There are more good looking girls in this bar than the entire city of Boston," he said.
His tone wasn't one of hyperbole. He was dead serious.
And he was dead right.
On a blistering hot day in Texas that felt far too warm for it to be football season, LSU laid claim to being the nation's best football team. That's what beating the number three team in the nation does for you when the top two teams play weak competition, it makes you the best. At least in the antiquated, confusing, perception-based business that is college football today. If Oregon is truly the third best team in the nation, then what is LSU? A team that pimpslapped the Ducks around the field like, well, like a pimp in the French Quarter angry that his prostitutes were short-changing him would do. Or like Mike Leach would do to Craig James if he ever saw him in public.
LSU came, LSU saw, and LSU conquered.
Toss a little fried duck in the jambalaya.
No joke, one LSU fraternity even spent the afternoon throwing bread crumbs at Duck fans.
When I asked him after the game whether LSU deserved to be the number one team in the nation, Miles hemmed and hawed. Ultimately he settled on this answer: "I'm not in any way lobbying to be the number one team in the country."
And that's all well and proper, Les shouldn't have to lobby to be number one. But LSU should be the number one team in the country.
No doubt about it. When Jarrett Lee, the quarterback that forced LSU fans to cover their eyes for three years, comes in and delivers precision pass after precision pass, when two running backs, Spencer Ware and Michael Ford, provide a bruising combo and when your defense behind the lead of John Chavis, the best defensive coordinator in the SEC, shuts down the vaunted Oregon attack, how aren't you the number one team in the country?
Miles, whose entire LSU coaching career has been steeped in chaos, was tremendously controlled after the game. That's because nothing that he saw on the field today surprised him. He expected his team to dominate. The biggest flaw all day for LSU? Aside from a shotgun snap that Jarrett Lee wasn't expecting? When Miles said, "Go Cowboys," and then tried to spell "go" in the French fashion.
"G-u-a-u-x," Miles spelled.
The misspelling will likely spell a new trend -- LSU fans embrace every quirk in Miles' personality -- meet Guaux Tigers t-shirts that will mint a new millionaire on the bayou.
Ever since last year's head-to-head win over Nick Saban in Death Valley, LSU fans have finally done the impossible -- fallen in love with the Mad Hatter.
Here are eleven other things aside from LSU being number one that came out of today's game. As for me, I'm off to the night with LSU fans.
Pray that I survive.
1. Parking is $100 outside the stadium.
The craziest thing about this, it's a dentist's office!
Get 40 cars in here and you're netting $4,000 on a Saturday afternoon.
How much does he charge for Cowboys games -- it looks like less based on the added zero here? Regardless it's a hell of a business plan and the most I've ever seen charged for parking at a game.
2. Jerry's World Stadium is amazing.
Here's a pic of the field level luxury suites with headsets that allow you to listen in to the play calls. You're actually on the field so the view isn't that great of the player action, but you can hear and see tons on the bench. Plus, you're close to the Oregon cheerleaders.
In fact, I'm going to be one of the first to make this argument: Move the SEC title game to Dallas instead of Atlanta. At the very least put it in the rotation.
Jerry's World kicks the absolute crap out of the Georgia Dome.
More seriously, if you're going to add Texas A&M why not go after the state full-bore? Are you telling me that having the SEC title game in Texas every two or three years wouldn't be gold for SEC recruiting?
"Come to (insert SEC school here) and when you take us to the title game, your mommas and daddies can come watch the best conference in America in Texas," every SEC coach will say to a Texas recruit.
This absolutely has to happen.
3. New thesis: The bigger the game, the hotter the women.
Why?
Further thesis -- the richer fans go to the bigger games and they break out the heavy artillery when it comes to their women.
Also, and women would know this better than me, but you probably save your best outfits for the biggest games, right? Like, you don't burn your best skirt on the LSU-Northwestern State game, right?
Let me just say that there wasn't a single ugly wife or girlfriend at this game. LSU brought the smoke jumpers for this one.
4. Auburn escapes with a 42-38 win over Utah State.
LSU fans audibly groan when Auburn recovers the onside kick. That's when it hits me, Auburn has become the first school in SEC history that the other 11 schools are rooting against.
Previously I'd argue that Florida has been the most hated SEC team. But that was generally a function of dominance. Auburn is really disliked because everyone knows it cheated its ass off last year. Worse, it profited tremendously off the cheating.
No doubt about it, Auburn is the most-hated team in the SEC.
5. Oregon fan to me before the game about LSU fans: "How do they drink so much and keep walking?"
It's a great question.
LSU fans' kidneys should be compared to other kidneys. Is it the Cajun blood? Do they metabolize alcohol faster? I'm open to your hypotheses as well. No one drinks like LSU fans.
It's amazing.
Especially in this heat. Standing on the pavement it feels like your legs are melting. These LSU girls in their cowboy boots have to be losing ten pounds of water weight in those shoes. Also, if you're a man why are you wearing pants?
Every single one of you reading this right now knows a guy who refuses to wear shorts.
This guy could have to walk ten miles in 108 degree heat while carrying a keg on his back and he's still insisting on wearing pants. Why? It makes zero sense. It's not 1948 anymore.
6. Jarrett Lee exited the field to the loudest cheers of the night.
Right before jogging off the field he hugged his mom who told him, "You played great, son."
Can you imagine how tough it would have been to be Jarrett Lee's mom? Your son is just raked over the coals for four years and you have to sit around and hear all of it. That would suck for Jarrett Lee, but it would suck for his mom even more. Then, tonight, he finally wins a huge game, the highest-ranked regular season win for LSU since 1997.
She seems like she's handling it well. Better than Jonathan Crompton's dad did. Two hours after UT beat Georgia in 2009, I log into my email and Crompton's dad has emailed me talking trash.
Seriously.
7. Watching a game at Jerry's World, you feel like you're in the future.
It's difficult not to watch the massive jumbotron that makes every player look as big as an individual building. On some plays the jumbotron has multiple screens featuring a variety of angles. The Darron Thomas midfield interception for instance, the jumbotron can break in to four screens and show you simultaneous reaction shots of four different people on the field, the quarterback, the defensive back, the coach, and the defensive players.
It's amazing.
But then after a while you realize that you aren't even watching the field because the jumbotron is so much of a better view.
It's like the future of football on steroids. Eventually we're all going to show up for games and look up instead of down.
8. LSU takes the lead on a punt that outkicks its coverage.
Picked up for a score by LSU and suddenly it's 9-6 Tigers.
Oregon fans put their hands on their heads and look around in dismay, a 6-3 lead has vanished in an instant.
But every SEC fan nods knowingly, Oregon, meet Les Miles.
9. During halftime, I take a break from LSU and watch Boise State dominate Georgia.
Go ahead and write this down: Dan Mullen will be the next head coach at Georgia.
And please stop Mississippi State fans. There is no way your program is as good as Georgia's. Y'all are already arguing this on Twitter. You're wrong.
10. When LSU scores to go up 30-13, I halfway expect to look down on the field and see LSU fans carrying Oregon's cheerleaders up the aisles on the way back to Baton Rouge.
How bad is it getting?
LSU fans, who have been able to keep drinking beer and liquor inside the stadium, start chanting overrated with eight mintues remaining in the game.
Maybe the Tigers should get in bar fights before every game.
11. By the end of the game, all I can think is this: is there any way this Oregon van made it back to Dallas in one piece?
As the SEC chants rained down on the field in Dallas it was hard to escape the feeling that, for a sixth consecutive season, the road to the national title is draped in kudzu and drowned in whiskey.
It's a new decade, but SEC dominance has not waned.
Even if Les Miles summed up the night in characteristic Milesian fashion: "We don't feel like we've hung the moon in any way."
Okay, maybe not the moon, but they definitely hung some Ducks.