Column: Florida-LSU ... are we there yet?| by Carl Dubois on Oct 9, 2009 at 1:25 am |  | |
I usually try not to repeat myself, but there are times when it's just too tempting. This is one of those times.
Before LSU began August camp in 2002, the preseason after its first SEC championship in 13 years, I wrote a Sunday piece with the intention of setting the scene for the start of practice. I looked everywhere for inspiration, hopeful of finding something to illustrate how eager fans were for the Tigers to tee it up again.
A passage from A.A. Milne's "Winnie the Pooh" seemed perfect.
"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best -- " and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.
We know, and we experience it in a variety of ways.
Don't pretend you weren't looking forward to Jim and Pam's wedding.
Do you remember Christmas eve as a child?
Waiting, waiting, waiting at the airport, and the plane lands, and passengers begin filing out, and ... look, there she is!
When is that moment for you before kickoff?
Maybe waking up on Game Day. Maybe never going to sleep. Maybe the cadence of pregame.
That 2002 season I previewed with Winnie the Pooh uttering the first words opened with LSU at Virginia Tech, and for many fans of the Hokies, I suspect that moment comes with the first notes of "Enter Sandman."
Or maybe just before.
Most LSU fans in 2003 didn't know what it was like to count down the hours to a national championship game involving the Tigers. They could tell you how many years it was since the 1958 championship team, but those Tigers received their title after the regular season -- before the bowls, and long before the creation of the BCS.
What was the moment when fans could almost taste the Sugar-sweet honey? When they walked inside the Superdome? When they saw the Tigers warming up? When the tap ... tap ... tap-tap-tap of pregame crystalized the context in an almost surreal epiphany?
Or was it when they saw Lionel Turner make his move, shift gears and begin to close in on Oklahoma quarterback Jason White?
Did the prospect of more sweetness cause any less salivating and adrenaline as the 2007 team prepared to take on Ohio State in a moment of are-we-really-here-again?
Hype often tricks us, sets us up. More often than not, the Super Bowl has failed to live up to expectations. Two years ago, Florida-LSU did not disappoint. That may have been the perfect marriage of buildup and actuality.
From the presence of "College GameDay" to the introduction of a new Mike the Tiger, to the roar that swept Death Valley when Stanford's upset of USC was announced, to Les Miles going for it and making it on fourth down, to wondering whether he would do it again, and again, and again, and again, to Jacob Hester's lunging touchdown, to Tim Tebow's rainbow into the end zone, to the ball hitting the ground and wrapping up LSU's 28-24 victory, that was the greatest Game Day and Night atmosphere I've ever experienced.
Are we about to see something like that again?
We don't always know when some of the most memorable moments will occur, and that's why we watch. And really, it's never the same if you're at work and DVR the game and have to watch it later, is it? Watching live, watching something no one has ever seen before, that's the thrill.
That's what gets us up early on Game Day, but we never know for sure what's coming.
Did anyone wake up on the morning of the Warren Morris home run in 1996 and think they would soon witness the most dramatic finish in College World Series history? In 2002, a football season that keeps popping up in this column, did anyone think anything special would happen at Kentucky?
The loudest explosion of crowd noise I've ever heard was in 1986, when Billy Hatcher's solo home run with one out in the bottom of the 14th inning kept the Houston Astros alive against the New York Mets in the NLCS. Inside a packed Astrodome, before Houston discovered the art of the retractable-roof stadium, there was no place for the sound to go.
Tiger Stadium has reached for a ceiling many times, including throughout that 2007 matchup between Florida and LSU. Like this one will be, it was a night game, with the low ceiling Miles loves to talk about, and somehow the Gators and Tigers managed to raise the roof.
We all expected that night to be special, and it was. Is that a river we can't step into again, or do you and your senses feel a worthy sequel coming on?
You're beginning to get impatient, aren't you? The honey won't pour out of the jar fast enough.
Winnie the Pooh didn't know what to call the feeling. You do.
Anticipation.
.
Carl Dubois has written or blogged about LSU sports since 1999. You can contact him at carl1061 'at' gmail.com.
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