1989 Football revisited

Mike Archer's lack of recruiting caught up. LSU's Larry Coker.

I remember the Tennessee game. Traded 4 lower bowl for first row of upper deck. But the highlight of the day was seeing the basketball team practice with Shaq, Chris Jackson and Roberts.

total disaster. Special teams, if the defense played well the offense was awful. If the offense played well the defense was awful.

A&M ran the opening kickoff of the season back for a TD.There was a series of plays in the last minute of the first half vs Tennessee that was a microcosm of the whole season.

Tied 14-14 we are at the Vol 3 or 4. On 2nd and then 3rd down Hodson hit a TE on both plays right in the hands for what should have been wide open TDs. Dropped both. Kick a FG to go up 17-14 with about :08 left in the half. Carl Pickens returned the kickoff 90+ yards for a TD as the half expired for Tennessee to go up 21-17.

They then went up 45-24 before we made a nice comeback to lose 45-39. Alabama beat us much,much worse than the final score. But other than that game LSU either led in the 4th quarter or had possession in the 4th where a score would have put us ahead.

the beginning of the dreaded 90s

There is more to the Archer story than you guys let on and it had everything to do with tBOS and Bob Broadhead.

Broadhead was canned in November of 1986 and left a void when it came to leadership inside of the Athletic Department and then later on in 1986 Arnsparger announced he was resigning to become AD at FL. This put everything into a tailspin. There were two factions on the Board at the time. One wanted to bring in someone from the outside. This bunch actually was willing to go with Spurrier and had an offer to present to him. en things started to fall apart.....the team got involved and basically said that they would not play for anyone but Archer and that some were more than willing to transfer. Archer was well liked particularly on the defense and the defense was stacked going into the 1987 season even with the departures of Michael Brooks and Roland Barbay, et al

The Board decided that the upside to Archer was greater than the downside although there were some like Cusimano who had their reservations but the y figured that with the amassed talent from the Arnsparger and even Stovall years that they could weather it and Archer could grow into the role . Actually for the first two years Archer seemed to be a very good pick. LSU finished Top 5 after the 1987 season and won a share of the SEC in 1988.

The longer Hodson stayed, the worse we seemed to be on offense. 75% of our output on offense came against bottom dweller SEC teams and Ohio. I don't know all the reasons, but we definitely peaked on offense in 87. We couldn't do dick against anyone on offense until later in the season. Tennessee was a really good team and probably the best game we played on offense all year. SEC was really solid that year. Brutal 2 games to open up the year.