Who Are We?

I believe that we can only hold Les Miles truly accountable if we have almost unrefutable evidence that he isn’t using the talent that he’s recruited on a consistent basis. Let’s remember, Miles has been an excellent recruiting coach, and generally has been good at making big-picture adjustments. Look at Ohio State’s coach—Tressel is not as good as a coach as Les Miles because it has taken him quite some time to move away from slow running games. Miles has recruited pretty well, but he has also recruited into a new era of football. Chad Jones and Patrick Peterson are clearly studs. So is Shepard.

But is he coaching poorly? I’m not sure. He’s made one large mistake—trusting that one QB would be enough for a few years (RP). It haunts the team even today. IF JJ were now in his junior year, I think he’d be a much better QB, and we’d be able to have a much more complete game. Honestly, we gave Lee just as much if not more leeway last year. Jefferson is almost in the same boat as Lee. And Miles made some great play calls two years ago—knowing that going for it on 4th down was the right thing to do, and sticking to that judgment, is a mark of a good coach. And those teams did not typically play very sloppy games—which is what we’re seeing now, for the most part. If the sloppiness gets fixed, I think this team has the talent to get 10 wins. I don’t really see too much to blame on Miles, especially if you average it out over two or more years. I think people are upset not so much at the coaching, but the dominating performance we used to see, and are projecting that onto the coach. Meyer is considered a better coach—but even he made a terrible mistake and got his star QB blown up. That could still destroy their season, and Tebow’s career (though hopefully he gets better). Every coach makes mistakes.

Also, who would you put in his place? Most of the best coaches are in the SEC already, and I think Miles has adjusted to the SEC type of football play. He has a better resume than most of the coaches out there. Michigan would love him. Hell, Tennessee would love him. Give the man a little time. We’re still on track for the season. We’ll see.

If you saw my last rant that I posted on RP’s blog earlier – it was that if the football gods punish us with the second coming of Curley Hullman we will have gotten what we deserve.

But here is the most important thing you said: “Some fans have already gotten angry over a Georgia loss, and if it actually happens, they’ve been living that loss for five weeks.”

Indeed, many LSU fans have this fatalistic personality trait that synaptically (sub-consciously) forces them to expect failure. While their conscious person remembers all the recent success and doesn’t think we should fail. Having already seen the calamity (though it hasn’t actually happened) in their heads they act/react as if it has.

So many have decided that we can’t possibly win another game therefore Les has to go for losing six or eight games, that bastard.

WAKE UP people – we haven’t lost a game!

Will we lose this week-end, I personally don’t think so but what if we do? Is that the ‘final straw’ after all it will be proof that he can never win another game right?

I am almost ashamed to be a tiger fan right now – I’m as proud as I have ever been with the football team and coaching staff and couldn’t be more optimistic of the team’s future but I am ashamed of how we are treating our Damn Fine (and by gawd, loyal!) football coach!

Oh, one other question tiger fans – if you were one of the top recruits in the country and were being recruited by all of the big name programs what would you do to help you learn about the school, team, environment? Would you get on the internet, maybe check out some blogs? What would you think if the fans were calling for an undefeated coach to be fired? When you went on a recruiting visit and watched the fans BOO a true freshman off the field, what would you think? When you looked around in the middle of the third quarter in a close game against a conference foe and the stadium was half empty, what would you think?

You’d probably think, that Miles guy seems like a great coach and he sure has been successful but you know Alabama gets 97,000 fans at their spring game and they don’t leave the stadium until they get thrown out, and I doubt they’d ever boo me off the field, let call Nick one more time before I decide…

Sports in general is meant to be a friendly competition and a celebration of human strength, athleticism, skill and determination.

If it means more to you than that, you are probably an athlete, and that is understandable because success in sports can mean money and pride.

You’re not an athlete? Then you might want to take a moment and analyze why it’s so important to you.

Do you draw a lot of pride from your sports team as if it was you that accomplished something and not the players? Is hearing it from your asshole Bama fan neighbor just too painful from you? Do you feel that need to win a message board argument?

You might want to try doing something productive and take pride in that. I take pride in the fact that I’m a good student and a good guitar player, not in the fact that my college football team beat Mississippi State.

If you verbally insult a football player the way the Ole Miss blog did a few days ago, why is that? Do you feel entitled to better play from that player, and you’re unwilling to be patient while that player develops? You think you look like anything other than a prick by dissing a player from the comfort and safety of your computer?

If you think Les Miles give a damn about what the rant or what this blog has to say, think again. Les is undoubtedly thinking about his team ALL THE TIME. What happened last weekend, how to stop Georgia, what that player is doing wrong, etc. He doesn’t need the rant to tell him anything except how little the fans really know. SO MUCH goes on on a football team, and the fans see so little of it. What the rant doesn’t get to see, they fill with vapid speculation. I guarantee you that 80% of the complaints about Les Miles are based purely on rant speculation gems like “Les is messing with Crowton’s playcalling” and “There’s no way Les will fire Mallveto”. The other 20% of them are usually legitimate comments because Les is not perfect. No coach is perfect, and this is the area where friendly, rational discussion on the football team comes in. That’s where this blog comes in.

This isn’t to say there isn’t a time when the fan should be concerned. If I was a Colorado, Illinois or Virginia fan, I would be very, very concerned. If LSU was 1-3 or 2-2, I would be concerned. For the state of Louisiana, LSU football is also a huge source of income, and consistent success on the field will keep the income flowing. On that level, we are doing more than fine, and you really shouldn’t be worried about the bottom falling out of the LSU football cookie jar.

Winning is a lot more fun than losing, but if winning isn’t enough for you, and the team must DOMINATE for you to be satisfied, I feel sorry for you.

If you’re pissed at the team because it won but didn’t cover the spread, try a gambling hot line.

College football is a time for fans to get together, tailgate and have fun. In the end, the game itself is just a game, and that’s all. If it’s more to you than that, you might want to examine your priorities.

and raise you Jerry Stovall.

I would love for LSU to win the West every year and complete for National Championships, but realistically the SEC is too competitive for that to happen.

My personal minimum threshold is 9-3 regular season. That works out to three cupcake wins, one competitive OOC BCS level game tossup, and a 6-2 or 5-3 conference record. A single season dip below that is understandable, but I also would expect us to win the West every 2-4 years and the conference about every 4 years.

2 seasons in a row below 9-3 is cause for concern and a third season is when I join the torches and pitchforks crowd. If we’re consistently below 9-3 we’re losing out of conference games every year and/or finishing 4-4 in the SEC. I’m not even close to calling for Miles’ head yet. Now another 2-6 or 3-5 faceplant in conference play this year? I’m going to be getting antsy. At that point, I would say the coach is on the hot seat. But 4-0 after one 8-5 season? No way.

And it seems that many of the people yelling for Miles’ head right now are big Saban fans. His five year record? 8-4, 10-3, 8-5, 13-1, 9-3. Miles’ worst season so far at LSU is exactly the same record as St. Nick’s. Let’s please not get the reputation of running off good coaches because they can’t go 8-0 in the SEC every year.

My personal expectation is about 9-10 wins (usually equates to competing for the SEC West) on a year to year basis, but more importantly being competitive in our ballgames.

No one should be counting losses for this team on the strength of how the MSU game played out. We are in the SEC and wins in this conference are at a premium, no matter what the betting line is saying.

Did anyone notice how excited the players were after the goal-line stand. That’s what makes football special man. If the players can be excited about it, you may want to take some time to enjoy it as well.

There are problems on this team and discussion of it can be healthy, but some are being critical just for the sake of being critical. And Jrlz is right some have agendas as to why they are SO critical.

“It is September, and earnest poll-gazing is premature, to say the least. But a month into the season, is it too much to ask the AP, coaches and Harris polls reflect the slightest shred of common sense?

• LSU is No. 4. Because … ? The Tigers are not only playing mediocre football right now, going to the wire to beat Washington and Mississippi State on either end of ho-hum wins over Vanderbilt and Louisiana-Lafayette, but they don’t even have that much inertia in their favor: This was an 8-5 team that had to stage a frantic comeback against Troy to fend off a full-fledged, four-game November slide last year, had a losing conference record and didn’t even make it into the final top 25. This year, the Tiger offense currently ranks 105th nationally and needed an interception return, a punt return and a goal line stand to get out of Starkville unscathed.

How does a statistically average team with no particularly impressive wins to offset two extremely sketchy ones, coming off a thoroughly mediocre season, land in everyone’s top five? Is anyone paying attention?"

Is that empires fall — throughout all of history there never has been, and there never will be an exception to this rule.

Now, the way that translates to football is simple — everybody rebuilds, there are no exceptions. The only question is the degree of said rebuilding. What do you call USC’s offense this year? They couldn’t crack 20 points against Ohio State and Washington — when was the last time that happened in back to back weeks? Look at Florida in 2007 — they had to replace 10 starters on defense and had a terrible terrible pass defense. The only reason they managed to win 9 games was having a quarterback who put together the single greatest season anybody in this conference has ever had.

Georgia in 2006. Ohio State in 2004. Oklahoma in 2005 or Texas in 2007. It’s just a question of where those new starters are being broken in at, and how that affects you relative to the rest of your schedule. LSU has its own example of this in 2006 — an offensive line with three new starters succumbed to two teams with veteran defensive lines, Auburn and Florida, before coming together to become a pretty damn good outfit by the end of the season.

What this ultimately means is that EVERYBODY will have down years. You think Florida will never have another multi-loss season? Wait till next year when they have to replace Tebow, Spikes, Cooper and whatever underclassmen that may leave early ( and Hernandez, Haden, Wright and Dunlap would all be high enough draft choices to make it worth considering). Sure, Florida’s got plenty of talent, but talent requires seasoning — in this league, sometimes that seasoning comes with losses. Most of the time there’s a fine line between those wins and those losses. And just a few mistakes may be the difference between three, four or five losses.

This isn’t to say everything should be forgiven at all times. There is no question things have to improve with this LSU football team. But those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it and if LSU fans don’t learn to show patience, this cycle will absolutely continue to repeat with any and all future coaches.

Really puts my life and accomplishments in perspective.

First I just want to say great blog, I’m glad I stumbled on it a few months ago and now onto my first post.

I think there are a number of things contributing to the level of discontent among the Tiger faithful that have set some back to the pre Saban catastrophe syndrome. Here are my thoughts on the situation.

Problem 1: 8-5 doesn’t taste good and 4 games in it still tastes like we drank a glass of merlot, a can of pbr, and 4 shots of Canadian Club last night and woke up with Chernobyl in our mouth. If this team would have blown up ULL, like we used to blow up teams like ULL we would all be seeing “progress” instead of doom and gloom.

Solution: Win at Georgia. Win ugly, win pretty, win late … just win and the same detractors this week will be predicting a Tebowless win over Florida next week.

Problem 2: The problem areas on this team (O-Line namely) aren’t places where we are used to seeing problems. We have had a very long run of dominate line play and we don’t know how to handle poor line play. That poor line play is causing the offense to stutter and an ugly win at State.

Solution: Take a deep breath and focus on the signs of improvement no matter how small. There are signs of improvement from week to week and this will be a completely different team come Thanksgiving.

Problem 3: 2008 had no wins in big games. LSU lost every big game (minus the bowl) it played in. That’s no fun ever. Fans live to celebrate a huge win over a higher ranked team, and to rub it in to your biggest rival. We didn’t get to do that last year. There was no joy at someone else’s expense and that adds to the misery of what was “only” 8-5.

Solution: None. The team needs to win big games. Big games are what define a program look at OSU and OU and their national respect in big games. It is completely reasonable for the fans to demand big wins every season. Again, win at UGA and this will go away.

Now we head into the deeper areas of the LSU psyche, the long standing fears that were just below the surface for a while and are bubbling up now.

Problem: Saban, Alabama, Florida, Ole Miss etc. LSU fans are incredibly sensitive to the smallest slight taken against their Tigers. How dare anyone even suggest that Ole Miss, OLE MISS is better than LSU? And I think we all know about the Saban problem and how he has Bama back so fast. I think LSU fans are so desperate to be viewed in a positive light that the first sign of a problem with the team is cause to jump into the deep end.

Solution: Forget about Saban. I know this is especially hard for some people, but he is never coming back to LSU and he will most likely be at Bama for a long time. The easy way to do this is beat him at his own game. Fence off the state and beat his ass on the field. Another way to get rid of this problem is to get some Bravado! We are LSU, we are a damn good football program, we have 2 crystal balls, we don’t care about your flash in the pan, Ole Miss!

My expectations are for this team to win at least 9 games a year. Sure there will be some 8 win years, but they need to be years apart. I expect a winning record in conference every year. I expect to be in the hunt for the SECW every year and win the SEC somewhere in the once every 3-4 year frequency. I expect to win big games every year.

I think that is a very fair expectation level for this University. With the in-state players, the money that is available, the facilities, the fans there is no University that beats LSU in those combined categories, of course some others match us, but no one is better. Everything is in place to be very good for a very long time and I am of the opinion that last year will be seen as an aberration in the long term.

LSU wins at UGA this week by 3 in an ugly game with the D coming up big with a few turnovers from turnover prone UGA. Sorry if I got carried away in my long post.

Thoughtful post, Poseur.

Broadly, I think of success as progress year to year. The 2004 season was a really frustrating one because of how dominant the 2003 team was. Oregon State, Auburn, Georgia, Troy, Ole Miss, Iowa … all frustrating games, and we only lost three of them. I can’t say that was a 9-win season I was satisfied with. I was much more satisfied with 8 wins in 2000, because of where we were coming from. That was a very successful year in the context of 1999.

The Miles era is complicated. Clearly the team was very successful by most measures from 2005-2007. But there’s been this consistent lack of dominance game to game that I think leads to this sense of impending (relative) doom. You can find games – wins and losses – each year that were just not the performance that was reasonably expected. And to stay at the level of success (wins) LSU has shown since 2003, there’s not a lot of room for error.

The 2007 team was a perfect example. The Arkansas loss did not cost us a shot at the SEC title, but it was a fluke that we made it to the BCS title game with two losses. And before somebody comes back with crap for me saying that, we were absolutely the most-deserving two-loss team. But it took Pitt upsetting West Virginia for us to make that game; otherwise the Arkansas loss kills us in the BCS.

So I think there was justifiable frustration from the Arkansas game in 2007 (though on balance the team’s performance that season was much more dominant than 2005 or 2006) even though we won the title. It made that title just slightly less satisfying. And then 2008 happened and real concern started to grow.

Maybe we slide back to being an 8- or 9-game winner most years. It’s possible that could happen just from the rise of other programs in the SEC. That would be tough to take from a “success” level we’re at now, but we now have very high expectations in a very tough conference.

What I look for as success game to game is good execution. I don’t expect or demand a win every week – I hope that’s not who we are. I wasn’t bothered by our loss to Alabama last year. With what our QB situation had become, where Alabama was as a program and how we played, I can easily accept that loss. But I was really bothered by our win over Troy for obvious reasons.

This week’s game at Georgia is one I think is winnable with good execution and losable with bad execution. If we go in and execute well and win, that will be great. If we execute well and lose to Georgia because they were better, that’s OK. If we execute poorly and win, I won’t be satisfied with that. Happy with it, but unsatisfied because poor execution eventually catches up with you (see 2008).

I think that’s a pretty rational way to look at it and keep a healthy perspective. I guess a lot of people would say I should be happy with any win and just move on, and it’s probably a product of LSU’s success that it’s not that simple. But I think that’s OK.

Really, some thoughtful replies from the ATVS community. You guys really came through. I’m kind of proud of this post, not for the content, but that it sparked such thoughtful dialogue.

There’s no right answer, but it is interesting to see where we all stand in our expectations. It’s where all criticism has to start (what did you expect?). However, Ken, we know the only reason LSU lost to Arkansas was because I was at the game.

We’ll take him off your hands…..

I think much of the backlash is due to fear.

Since 2001, we’ve won the west in every odd numbered year. When you compare our level of play to other teams in the west, it looks like 2009 may not be our year.

Since 2002, even in years that we didn’t win the west, we were always only 1 win short of winning the west. Now this is often the case with all 2nd or 3rd place teams in the West, but the point is we were in the race all season.

Until 2008, we hadn’t had a losing season in the SEC since 1999. We were officially out of the SEC West race after the Alabama loss. With respect to the primary goal of our season “Win the West” the rest of our games were meaningless.

So I think as fans, we want to be playing meaningful games late in the season. Meaningful to win the West, meaningful to win the SEC championship, and meaningful to go to BCS bowls. We didn’t have that type of season last year, and it was the first time in a long time that we didn’t. LSU has been an elite program for so long now, that we likely have many fans who have not experienced anything but winning, and being a dominant football team. We will likely be staring at our longest absence from Atlanta in 10 years after this season. That is hard for a lot of people to handle.

Have we already bounced back after last year’s disappointing season? Or will it take another season…or two…or three?

LSU fans still know how to win, but we’ve forgotten how to lose.

I agree that wins are wins, but when the team plays down to the competition, it’s frustrating for all of us. We were competitive in the Troy and Arkansas games, but I don’t think anyone was satisfied with either of those games. That’s why the Peach Bowl result was so heartening. It seemed like the whole team got their fire and spirit back.

Since then, it looks like the same lackluster, play down to the competition effort we saw in the second half of last season. I want them to be competitive with good teams and win comfortably with bad teams. We shouldn’t give up last possession TDs to Washington or need punt return TDs and goal line stands to beat Miss. State. It’s frustrating because we know they’re capable of great results. Yes, we’re replacing some key OL and defensive players, but we returned 16 of 22 starters. This is largely the same team we saw in the Peach Bowl. We just need the same effort we saw then.

I would love for LSU to be the cream of the crop, but I’m not sure our “natural” place in the college football ecosystem is to be the very tip top of the foodchain (as we have been this decade). I think (hope) we are a notch below that.

The thing is, all programs wax and wane — see Nebraska, Miami, Notre Dame, Florida State. College football has lots of variance. Once upon a time int he 90s, North-friggin;-western was going to the Rose Bowl. For some perspective: imagine Vanderbilt going to the Sugar Bowl!

I would like us to be consistently win 6 games in the SEC, and put together mostly nine to ten win seasons, and win the SEC outright every five years or so, and go to the Cotton Bowl or better two out of five years. Honestly, I would like a bit better than that, but I think that might be LSU’s “proper” place. But again, there is a lot of variance. We will go through stretches where we do much better (2003-2007) and stretches where we don’t do as well.

It’s over, LSU beat Georgia 26 – 23!!

I’m serious, I just watched it….. On ESPN Classic.

It was a ‘toss up’ according to the experts, LSU was ranked 6th but had a suspect line and the running game just wasn’t clicking so a lot of people were suspicious of the ranking and grumbling was afoot already for the new head coach (Mike Archer) who hadn’t yet lost a game.

On the other hand UGA had one loss to a good Clemson team and was fairly battle tested having beaten OSU, UVA, Ole Miss, USC (Carolina) and was ranked 16th in the country.

With the game being betwixt the hedges a lot of people, including a lot of fatalistic Tiger fans, no doubt, were picking the dawgs.

Despite trailing for most of game the Dawgs intercepted a Tommy Hodson pass late in the 4th quarter. With a short field the Dawgs pushed in for the go ahead score 23-19 w/ less than 5 minutes on the clock.

Lee Corso said the Tigers were going to have to depend on their passing game as they couldn’t run the ball on UGA all day.

So much for that. Hodson and Fuller led the Tigers down field and scored they scored the go ahead touchdown with about four minutes left.

UGA then drove right down the field as time was starting to run out on the clock, very close to field goal range and still driving on 2nd and 5, Kevin Guidry intercepted a pass and the Tigers ran out the clock!

Tiger Win, Tigers Win, Tigers Win!!!!