Tiger Tracklist: Florida

Nobody pray for me

It’s been a day for me

Here we are, nearly a full week removed from LSU football crossing the event horizon of losing to Troy on a Saturday night in Death Valley.

No matter what happens the rest of the season, everything will be defined by the Troy loss. LSU no longer exists in a vacuum, that game will be tied to everything from here on out, fair or unfair, true or untrue.

LSU’s playoff hopes are six feet under and are not coming back up. LSU is technically still alive in the SEC West race, but it’s not looking likely.

And so the question becomes, what is LSU playing for now? For many, the answer would be “pride”. LSU is playing to defend the honor of a proud program. But truth be told, there is no pride to be had in this season. Losing to Troy takes that away. Nobody is going to respect LSU if they rattle off five more wins, the punchline will still be Troy. It’s going to be a punchline for another solid five years to come.

A more acceptable answer is building for next year. I’m all for that and as somebody who has already started to see the fruits of a rebuild of one of my other favorite teams, I fully support weathering out a bitter winter in exchange for a long, warm summer. This is by far the most important thing LSU can do right now, both for the team and for Ed Orgeron’s job status.

But what I really want for this team is to become something different, a little more in the moment.

I want this team to ruin the year of whatever school now has the misfortune of crossing paths with a pissed off LSU. If LSU is not going to win every game, they may as well push every team down the line around. If LSU isn’t going to win the game, they damn sure better beat up on the opponent and wear them down as much as possible. If you want to call it playing spoiler that’s fine, it’s not inaccurate. It’s a far cry from what the LSU program should be, but it is what it is.

I want LSU to be the college football version of this video:

And honestly, what better team to come into this new role against than Florida? We know what happened last year. We know how they played victim like a fiddle and how they gloated hours after taking a “there are things more important than playing a game” stance. It won’t change what happened last year or give LSU the Troy loss back, but quieting the Swamp and teaching Florida a lesson in humility would be the PERFECT way to come into LSU’s new temporary role. An interim role, if you will.

There is nobody who needs a pride check more than Florida.

This is not the first game of the rest of LSU’s season. They have to live with the losses. But they can still change the course of the season and salvage something out of it, even if that’s just ruining everybody else’s season.