quote:
Sorry, but that "part" of me was prohibited from ever existing in Tempe, Arizona, two weeks earlier. I was there and watched one of the most exciting (though not most well-executed) football games I've ever seen, and watched an incredibly gutsy LSU team scratch out a victory against incredible odds (and a fairly decent Arizona State team). That team had all the excuses it needed to just run out of steam, but they refused to quit. That's why I laugh so hard at the absolute morons who complain about the "letdown" against Tennessee two weeks later. Anyone who had been there and seen those guys fighting in the desert would know that they gave every ounce of sweat, fight, determination and exertion humanly possible (and maybe then some) before succumbing to the complete exhaustion of the nightmare in which they'd been living for 3+ weeks.

Now, 7 years later, there's no doubt. It takes an astounding amount of stupidity to believe that anyone short of an excellent coach could achieve the things Miles has achieved here. Either stupidity, or just a pathetic emotional attachment to hating Miles for some pathetic irrational reason. Anyone with a lick of sense can see that his record irrefutably places him among the best coaches in the game at the moment, and he is knocking on the door of earning a place among some of the best of all time. He's obviously not there yet, but he is definitely knocking on the door.

Well said King!!!

I do have to disagree with your previous post about us getting in against USC in 05 though.

I think the storyline about the split 03 championship should have been enough to get us in alone, but the love that the media had been heaping on VY since the Rose Bowl the year before when he torched Michigan, another media darling, was just too strong.

The Reggie/VY Heisman race was all anyone could talk about, and LSU simply didn't have any player that the media could point to as a superstar to matchup against Reggie and Leinart.

Katrina sympathy didn't stop LSU from falling from a BCS bowl to all the way to the Peach Bowl after the SECCG loss.

Though the SEC was already generally considered the best conference "top to bottom" by 2005, it wasn't until Florida murdered OSU in the next NCG that our #1 team was considered a shoe in for the title game.

The media and coaches still favored the USCs, OUs and OSUs of the world, two of which UT beat in 2005, as the best teams although our champ would usually have been acknowledged to have had the toughest road to a championship.

Auburn from 2004 is the perfect illustration of that fact. And there really wasn't much outrage about Auburn being left out at all, even after USC slaughtered OU. Sure, everyone figured that the matchup probably wasn't right, but VERY few writers actually thought that the outcome would have been any different if Auburn had gotten in.

That USC team was already being anointed as the GOAT, and most people just shrugged off Auburn getting left out because they didn't think they would have won anyway.

As much as it would have killed me to see it happen, I don't have any doubt LSU would have gotten left out in favor of UT in 2005.

This post was edited on 5/11/12 at 4:30 pm