Tiger Tracklist: Mississippi State

Gold is weird. It’s both a color and a metal, a shade that various people have different definitions of and something so valuable that it cause people to cross a continent to search for it, despite it being so remarkably rare that if somebody says you’ve struck it then you’ve gotten incredibly lucky. Our nation’s most notorious defense system was built to protect our reserve of it. The gold standard is a mark for how much worth we attribute to our cash money.

It’s a standard of excellence.

LSU’s official school colors are purple and gold. When you look at the official swatch LSU offers, you can see how gold is attributed, but it is more yellow than it is. Georgia Tech wears gold. Florida State wears gold. LSU wears yellow.

We let that slide because “Love Purple, Live Yellow” doesn’t sound as good as the alternative. But it’s goal. Look at our traditional football uniforms, what color are they? White and gold. And that makes sense, because the good guys wear white and the winners wear gold. This week, LSU is switching up their uniforms for both the gold game and to honor the past. What was gold is now white and what was white is now gold. And it’s real gold, not yellow.

Recently, LSU has lost track of the standard of excellence. A lot has been made of the black cloud that has hung over the program since that fateful night in January 2012, and not a lot of it is off base. It feels like the program is somewhere between cursed and snakebit and can’t do anything to shake it. This season was supposed to be the season when the clouds parted and we once again basked in the glow of the sun. It hasn’t gone that way, if anything the cloud got darker and meaner.

It’s time to stop shaking our fists at the clouds and time to start pushing through it. If Louisiana has learned anything from recent events, it’s that Fantine was wrong, there are no such things as storms you cannot weather. And the first step in doing so it to beat Mississippi State.

Beating Mississippi State isn’t a standard of excellence by any means, it’s just a standard for LSU. When State beat LSU in 2014, it was the first time they bested the Tigers in this millennium. Mississippi State could double their wins over LSU and the Tigers will still be ahead in the series record. So you couldn’t pick a better time, place, or opponent to breaking in a new starter in the SEC.

It doesn’t get any better from here. The Wisconsin loss doesn’t matter anymore and neither does the Jacksonville State win. The SEC is still in play and right now that’s the only thing that matters.

So put on your gold, get to the game, and be loud. Do your part to set the standard and the team will do the same.