Y A Tiger

What's the difference? At least we could fire Riley. Like ever.

Yep, I grew up in the Billy Cannon era too.

There already was one--it was called the NFL.

I lived in the first house on the right on Alaska Street through the '50s to early '60s. Charlie Mac lived two doors down. He was a sweet and patient guy who always had time for kids and whose wife would feed you cookies and lemonade. My house was next to the campus gates at what is now the Maravich Center. In those days it was the tennis courts and archery range. I spent nearly every day on those tennis courts. Further along was Mike the Tiger's (II) cage, and I would go visit him and his two wives often; you could smell them from my house, and my guess is they could smell me, too, because I swear I could have walked right into their cage with no problem. My dad wouldn't let me listen to the games on the radio, but I didn't need to--I could lie in bed and hear them on the PA system. Whenever the Tigers scored, the whole house shook. As a professor at LSU, my dad had the rights to free tickets--he gave them to his grad students. Sometimes they would take pity on me and take me to games. My dad hated the Tigers. No athlete, he came from a college with no football team, and when he was pressured by the administration to pass a failing football player, he turned this into a personal crusade. Unfortunately for him, he lost. Every Saturday night our street and our lawn filled up with parked cars. All the neighbor kids would charge for spaces and would be out with their flashlights--I was forbidden to. Instead, my dad put up a fence. I can still remember the first Saturday night in August when the Cajuns in their cars rolled in--right over the fence. Good thing my dad (still alive at 95) was still a young man; otherwise he'd have stroked out...

There is no but in that sentence. BUT it was not "a different game" back then, it just had fewer rules, way less padding, and far tougher people playing it. Yeah, they were slower (and admittedly whiter), but very few modern players would last more than a few games in the NFL of the late '40s and early '50s, for example. The league had mostly been suspended during the war and the returning veterans who got back into a uniform had a very bad attitude. Piling on in the line was universal and pro wrestling tricks like gouging and biting at the bottom were common. It was not unheard of for players to break bones and continue playing. Sometimes all season long. For a few years college players were older, too, due to returning to school and using their eligibility, and the game they played wasn't much gentler. You think I'm kidding? Google it and find out. Point is that the forward pass was more or less invented by Sammy Baugh and Tittle was very similar to him in strength and athleticism, playing both offense and defense. Either of those men could win a Super Bowl today; Joe Burrow is one of the very few modern players that could compete with them at all. As for Bert Jones, his career at LSU was hamstrung by conservative coaching more than "playing a different game"; when he got to Baltimore, his first two seasons compared very favorably to Burrows' and if ownership had given him any support, he'd have won a few rings. Very much like Burrow's situation in Cincinnati right now.

Y A and Bert. Tittle's performances were even more amazing when you consider he played defense in every game and was a running back in addition to setting every passing record at LSU until Bert came along to break them. My mom went to college with both Y A and Dub Jones and knew them socially ( though not intimately, which would be the inevitable suspicion today.)

And lost out to the first 5. Just saying.

quote:

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But 2019 was a once in a lifetime team. Generational QB. Perfect storm. Is even sweeter to think about because it was right before the world went to shite.

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Amen, brother.

Agreed. It's an unpopular position on this board but Wade has got to go. LSU basketball, aside from the Maravich and Shaq years, has never amounted to much, and Wade hasn't been able to change that. He was lucky not to get fired after the NCAA investigation but all the brouhaha over that provided smoke for the fact that he just isn't a very good coach. Nobody ever says "NBALSU" for a reason. His teams never play up to their full potential or play under discipline and few of his players have caught on in the pros unless you want to count the walking disaster that is Ben Simmons. Woodward has done a top-notch job so far in his other hires--time to trust him with another.

Shame the Bengals couldn't have hired him. But nobody ever accused that franchise of being smart.