re: 9-4, SECCG appearance, victory over Bama

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well I'm 58 years old and certainly not an entitled brat. I am, however, a fan that was excited we had a shot at the playoffs, but then laid an egg against a bad 4-7 team to kill that chance.

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By the way, I’m super disappointed in the lost opportunity. Even if we were always going to lose to Georgia (again, I am by no means conceding that as a loss), it took a lot of piss out of not only the SECCG, but this whole week leading up to it. And I am one that thinks Nick Saban has completely warped fans’ perceptions of how hard it is to win a championship—it’s extremely hard, nothing is guaranteed, and it’s important to take advantage of every opportunity you have because you never know when they’ll come around again. Look at the parity in college football this year that is just the beginning of the result of the combination of transfer portal, NIL, and the mere announcement of an extended 12-team playoff. Kids no longer have to go to Bama, Georgia, Ohio State, Clemson, or LSU to have a chance to win a championship. And just because Les Miles and Ed Orgeron won one at LSU doesn’t mean Brian Kelly is guaranteed to win one, despite being a far superior HC. This might wind up being his “worst” LSU team from an overall talent and depth perspective, but there’s no guarantee he’ll ever even make it back to Atlanta. I think he will, obviously, but still. So, I’m in agreement with the guy who said expectations are fluid, they changed drastically the last month, it’s extremely disappointing to have lost the opportunity to play the SECCG with a playoff berth on the line, and it will take some time to be able to take that birds-eye view of the season and realize it was a resounding success.

However, I’m not sure we laid an egg as much as we simply just got beat. It’s hard to win on the road in the SEC, and A&M was not a typical “bad” 4-7 team. They had certainly been playing terribly, but were always talented enough to be dangerous if they put it together. And they did. It’s not like we got beat by Missouri, there were a bunch of 5-star guys out there making plays all night. They were not as bad as their record suggested, and we probably weren’t as good as our would have. Not to excuse it, but we just don’t have much room for error in a lot of these games, and the 4-5 big plays we had been making all year long, we just didn’t make Saturday. And they did.

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You realize it doesn't make someone "entitled" to expect our team to play at a high level against a bad team, with a possible playoff shot on the line?

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I don’t know about “entitled,” unless you felt you were personally owed a better performance for some reason, but maybe “naive.” Especially if you’ve paid any attention to college football ever, but especially this season. Just in the past few weeks, Ohio State, Tennessee, Clemson, Oregon, and now LSU lost games to “lesser” teams to end their playoff aspirations. Records don’t win football games. They are not won on paper. Players have to go out and actually do the damn thing against other teams with talented players who also really want to win coached by coaches who also make millions of dollars and want to win just as bad as ours do. Unfortunately for us, the wrong group of players and coaches were the ones who went out and did it Saturday. But let’s not lose sight that the right one did 9 times so far this season.

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The future is bright.

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Absolutely...even if we lose to Georgia we can still win our bowl game and go 10-4. Who would have ever thought this could be possible at this time last year. We have at worst a top 10 maybe a top 5 recruiting class coming in too. Bk has done an impressive job in his first year!