re: Things I learned from the trip to Houston and this season.

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LSU is not a national powerhouse, not in the strictest sense. We are a GOOD program, that has been able to compete historically, but not the first school some casual fan in Wyoming would call the pinnacle. We don't have the history of Alabama, Ohio St, Michigan, Oklahoma, USC.

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But we haven't caught Alabama, not to where we can say we can beat them at their best.

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Does anyone outside of local homer fans think it will change? No.

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Our fanbase is riddled with illogical self-loathing. It's flabbergasting. There is so much wrong with these fatalistic sentiments that I don't even know where to begin critiquing them.

First, history is immaterial. Useless. Irrelevant. Historical performance is not and cannot be the proper baseline for future potential of a program. Two anecdotes should suffice to prove this beyond dispute. Prior to the 1970s, Florida State was a dreg of college football. They had little or no success. If you were to apply your historical paradigm to FSU in the 1970s, one would predict that FSU could never attain national prominence. Of course, the very opposite happened. Bowden came in and began exploiting the exploding population and shifting demographics of Florida. FSU became a juggernaut. Similary, the Florida Gators enjoyed modest success at best in the SEC prior to 1990 and the arrival of Spurrier. A historical analysis would have concluded that the Gators should continue their mediocre trajectory. Instead, they dominated the SEC for a full decade and have won three NCs in the last twenty years. Oregon is a more recent example of the same phenomenon: a historically bad team that has risen to prominence. There are others.

Historical standing is not a meaningful predictor of future success. Period. It's largely inapposite.

So what is the right gauge of a program's potential? It should be fairly obvious to anyone that the potential of a CFB program hinges on its facilities, the resources and revenue that it can commit to the football team, and its natural recruiting base. By those standards, LSU damn well is elite. We now have incredible facilities, including the most revered stadium in the nation. Our AD is very profitable. For example, LSU FB was ranked as the fourth most valuable program in the nation by Forbes. And there can be no doubt about the fertility of our recruiting base. We are the sole power in a state that produces ample NFL talent. We are immediately adjacent to the goldmine of Texas. And our recruiting tendrils extend into Alabama, Mississipi, Goergia, and Florida. An ESPN writer recently ranked LSU as the fifth easiest place to recruit in the country (ahead of Bama, I should note).

So by any objective standard, LSU has elite potential.

But potential isn't enough. You have to actualize it. In the realm of cfb, the catalyst that transforms potential into championship results is...coaching. There is no sport in which a coach has more of an impact on results. He controls every aspect of the team, from personnel (recruiting) to scheme to staff to philosophy to discipline. Given equal resources, the best coach wins.

In short - and this shouldn't be a revelation to anyone with functioning synapses - the best CFB programs in any era are those with elite facilities, monetary resources, robust recruiting, and elite coaching. This is borne out time and time again.

To wit, let's consider Alabama. You argue that we haven't "caught" Bama, as if they possess some inherent advantage over LSU. Balderdash. The ONLY reason they are stockpiling championships while we languish is because they have better coaching. If the staffs were reversed, we would be sitting on a hoard of trophies instead. In the first half of the 2000s, when we had the superior coaches, we dominated Bama. They have no native advantage. Rather, they have simply been more aggressive in pursuing elite coaches and making bold hires. They wooed Saban from the NFL and are reaping the rewards.

You further argue that the current heirarchy of the SEC is immutable. More timid defeatism. Of course it can change. It will change the minute that LSU has an elite coach. Once LSU weds its facilties and natural recruiting base to a brilliant coach, it can and will become a championship dynasty. There is no logical reason that LSU can't be an annual powerhouse and win multiple championships in abbreviated windows of time. We just need an exceptional - not merely good - coach.

In summary, LSU is elite and can dominate the SEC given the right staff.