re: My Biggest complaint........ the Team quitting

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TDTGodfather

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Gotdam.....that bit of truth is gonna sting. Well said bro.

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i don't see what the big deal is, they play for a fan base that gives up at the first sign of trouble, right? 


since nothing but championships will do around here, i would think the players having the same mindest would be want those fans want. no? 

no championship, why bother. 

they learned it from you, alright. they learned it by watching you. 

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don't see what the big deal is, they play for a fan base that gives up at the first sign of trouble, right?


since nothing but championships will do around here, i would think the players having the same mindest would be want those fans want. no?

no championship, why bother.

they learned it from you, alright. they learned it by watching you.

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Are you a season ticket holder?
Probably don't even go to home games?

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4 years to play 3 says our head coach!

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Until Les starts tying these kids to the goal posts to keep them in BR he just isn't trying hard enough!!!!

Stop settling Tiger fans!!!!

This is to reply to The Mick as to his statement about coaches that "faded and then returned to prominence."

Please accept what I say here as one person's opinion. I give it because I have had the experience of following LSU football as a sometime Louisianan who also happens to be an Alabama fan.

Based upon the fact that The Mick has brought up Bear Bryant as a prominent coach who "faded and came back," I offer the following.

Paul Dietzel, who won an LSU national championship in 1958, came to LSU from Kentucky, where he had been an assistant to Bear Bryant. Charley McClendon had been a player for Bryant at Kentucky. I suppose that Dietzel brought Charley Mac to LSU, having known him at Kentucky.

Charley Mac won his SEC championship at LSU in 1969. It is absolutely true that Bryant "faded" in 1969 and 1970 (6-5 and 6-5-1), then came back during the seventies with three more national championships and several SEC championships.

It is my opinion that last Saturday's game at Tuscaloosa was a benchmark in Nick Saban's career that corresponds to the situation Bear Bryant faced in 1970 and 1971. Saban's nemesis has been LSU and Les Miles, just as Tennessee (and in retrospect, General Robert Neyland)was Bryant's.

I can't with confidence rattle off all the figures, but I have run them before and I have run them by quite a few sportswriters over here. Right now there is a TV special in the works that is supposed to discuss this very subject, centering around the fact that Bryant began recruiting Black football players to Alabama in the early 1970's.

By the end of the 1960's Bryant realized that he could no longer win with the "two-fisted little Aggie," like he had done at A&M in the fifties and also at Alabama in the early sixties. The Game had caught up with him, in that football players were getting bigger and faster, and the Black athlete was changing the face of college football.

There is reason to believe that Alabama was not offered a Rose Bowl berth after the undefeated and untied 1961 national championship season because Alabama had no Black players; and that his undefeated and untied 1966 Alabama team with Kenny Stabler at QB was denied the national championship for this same reason.

Bryant's problem was that he could not bring the Black athlete to Alabama. Facts have been upturned that show that he actually had a few Blacks in his practices during the late sixties. A Birmingham sportswriter has stated this in a recent article.

How was Bryant to handle his predicament? It seems obvious that he thought long and hard about it and came up with a three-part answer. First, he turned down the offer by the Miami Dolphins to be their head coach -- Don Shula took the job and the rest is history. Second, he asked his longtime friend Darrell Royal (U of Texas) to teach him the Wishbone offense. Third, he asked another longtime friend, John McKay (USC), to agree to play a home and home with Bama in 1970 and 1971.

That 1970 game with USC is the subject of the upcoming TV piece. Sam "Bam" Cunningham "liked to killed us" was Bryant's description of the game as USC drubbed Alabama 42-21 in Birmingham. Bryant apparently had planned this. He took Cunningham around to the Bama locker room after the game and said, "THIS is a football player." Right then and there he indoctrinated the South to the Black Athlete.

In the summer of 1971 Bryant forbade reporters or anyone else to see his practices while he and his coaches installed the Wishbone in secret behind closed doors. USC at their place was the first game of the 1971 season. Alabama surprised USC and everyone else, beating the Trojans and McKay 17-10.

Back to the subject of Saban and Miles -- and Bryant and Tennessee. I don't think this has ever been brought out into the open like it ought to be, that by 1970 Alabama and Tennessee were head to head -- EVEN -- in their longtime rivalry. I don't have the figures before me, but they were tied as to wins and losses.

I will venture this opinion here -- the reason Saban cracked a smile and jumped into McCarron's arms Saturday was that he broke the tie between himself and Miles as to regular season wins. The overall record between them now is 5-3.

Compare that to Bryant and Tennessee. Bryant had played at Alabama against General Neyland and Tennessee during the mid-thirties. He knew that Neyland year in and year out had gotten the better of Frank Thomas, Bryant's coach at Alabama. When Bryant was head coach at Kentucky, he never beat Neyland; he did tie him once.

When Bryant came to Alabama in 1958, Neyland was long gone, and Bama was ahead of Tennessee by one win in the overall series. By 1970, Tennessee had drawn even with Bama, which means that Bryant as head coach at Bama had lost one more game to Tennessee than he had won. In fact, he had lost three straight to them, in 1968, 1969, and 1970.

Bryant's old players will all tell you that he especially "loved to beat Tennessee." I think that these long term head-to-head records are important to head coaches, though they will never admit it. They look at "the papers" just like everyone else. Everyone has a tendency, after all, to ask the question, "How do I figure into all this?"

A determined Bryant, starting in 1971, beat Tennessee eleven straight years, and Tennessee has never caught back up. Right now I think that Alabama may be twelve games ahead in the series.

The question facing LSU people is this, isn't it? What is going to be the long term record between Saban and Miles? The same thing faces Alabama fans, doesn't it? Is 2013 what 1970 was to Bryant? Where does this go from here?

Just as Bryant faced the problem of not being able to compete (like he wanted to) without Black players, Saban has, in effect, had to compete with himself. How many head coaches build up a program into a powerhouse and then have to turn around and play that very same program?

THE QUESTION posed in this thread is whether Les Miles can come back from "fading away"? I have written this to try to point out that it is not just Les Miles and LSU who are involved in this situation. I don't propose to venture an opinion as to the Miles-LSU side of the question. I leave that to the appropriate people.

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*SouthernRabbit*

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Very insightful and well thought out post. Thanks for sharing.

The fans care way more than the players. All they care about is being healthy and in good shape once draft day rolls around. Once you accept this truth, it makes it much easier to just enjoy the games for what they are.

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The question facing LSU people is this, isn't it? What is going to be the long term record between Saban and Miles? The same thing faces Alabama fans, doesn't it? Is 2013 what 1970 was to Bryant? Where does this go from here?

{against LSU}...Saban has, in effect, had to compete with himself. How many head coaches build up a program into a powerhouse and then have to turn around and play that very same program?

THE QUESTION posed in this thread is whether Les Miles can come back from "fading away"?

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Nicely written. It looks like for now Nick Saban has turned the corner. LSU fans would like to say Les Miles isn't done. But I have to be honest with what I see - since the regular season OT win over Alabama in Tuscaloosa in late 2011, I have seen no evidence that Les Miles has successfully mastered an effective game-winning answer to whatever Nick Saban puts out there. Yes, CLM got close last year. But in the end, there was not an answer and this year it was worse.

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if you've thought at any time that the players playing in death valley have fed off the fans (LSU vs UF in 97 or 07, LSU vs UGA 03, etc) then you believe the players have benefitted from the fans being behind them.

wouldn't the opposite be true? when fans don't give a shite, why should the players?

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Of course the players get more pumped up when TS is packed and rocking. But to put any weight behind TS being less than full/rocking having a huge effect is just fricked up. Yes, fans can affect some emotions, but fans can't be held responsible for lack of player effort and/or coaching.

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i don't see what the big deal is, they play for a fan base that gives up at the first sign of trouble, right? since nothing but championships will do around here, i would think the players having the same mindest would be want those fans want. no? no championship, why bother. they learned it from you, alright. they learned it by watching you.

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Horse.....fking ....shite.

Don't put this on the fans dumazz. TS has rocked hard more games than not over the last few decades...even in the years we sucked.
We as fans don't get a fking thing for trudging to the stadium and fighting the weather, crowds, and all the other BS it now takes just to get to your flippin seats.
If your telling me that these kids are overgrown titty babies who need the fans to hold their hands to get pumped for an SEC game in their own backyard....our problems are a lot larger than just CLM.
Coaches get paid big salaries....players get free rides and are treated like gods on the campus. They obviously come to LSU of their own volition. Is it asking to much for them to give 100% on every down in every game and show a little pride in the university???? Hell no its not! Its called intrinsic motivation and you either have it or you don't.
Any of the guys that have played sports on this board know exactly what I'm talking about. Hell, Im 52 and still play sports and have never taken a play off or laid down in any game I've played in. Its not in my DNA. And I sure as hell don't need some split tail in the stands shakin her tits and yelling for me to "go go go" to do my freekin job.

Nobody expects NCs every year, unless your a retarded Gump. But most fans do expect consistent competency on the field and on the sidelines every game.
Blame whoever you want, but don't blame the fans. If we didn't care, we wouldn't travel the ways our fans do.
Pumpers use the excuse all the time, "Miles isn't the one who threw that pick 6" or "Miles didn't miss that tackle (Welter did by the way)." So don't tell me our fans expectations have anything to do with what happens on the field...its a cop out.