2007 Was Always LSU’s Season

The mothership sent up a beautiful piece of loving devotion to the wonderful 2007 football season. A season they dub “the greatest season in college football history.” A season fittingly concluded with a goofy guy in an oversized hat, hoisting a crystal trophy, representing a university from the same state, in a city that drowned just 2.5 years prior. And yet, it’s all depicted as this perfectly glorious disaster that, of course, couldn’t have ended any other way. And frankly, that narrative is bullshit.

I don’t believe in destiny and 2007 LSU football sure as hell didn’t need it. There’s a carefree bit of analysis in which people assume the most direct path is the best path and any and all derivations are simply examples of failure that must be overcome.

All prophecies are self-fulfilling when you want them to be. The narrative of choice is that LSU drunk-stumbled around, as Cajuns do, showed up at the right place at the right time and were declared victorious, simply because their blood alcohol content is not measurable by human standards* while everyone else at the bar went home or passed out.

*This is actually verifiably true, as we outsold both of West Virginia’s first 2 games... combined in 2011. Our bodies convert alcohol into the FDA’s recommended daily nutrients. We are not gods; we have transcended them.

And it’s all bullshit.

2007 LSU Wasn’t Lucky

If I were to describe 2007 LSU, lucky would be one of the last words that came to mind.

We weren’t lucky when we lost one of our best defensive players due to academics before the season even started.

We weren’t lucky when the 9th ranked, eventual ACC Champions showed up and took a 41-point ass whooping that was a total snoozer from bell-to-bell.

We weren’t lucky when our goofy-ass-dipshit coach put one over on one of college football’s all-time heralded geniuses.

We weren’t lucky when the guts of our offense literally left it all on the field willing our team to victory against a Florida team whose best parts turned around and won the national title the next season.

We weren’t lucky that we had to play the only decent Kentucky football team of the past 60 years, on the road, in the rain, the next week.

We weren’t lucky that our QB’s arm decided to just kinda quit working for half of September and most of October.

We weren’t lucky when Auburn dipped to one of the shittiest cheap shots in college football history against our best player, who was single-handedly taking them to task at the time.

We weren’t lucky that a smart decision is universally deemed madness because our coach wasn’t a coward and played to fucking win the game.

We weren’t lucky that Nick Saban decided his former program would be the standard of excellence to measure his own program against and put a gold star next to that game for all eternity, starting in 2007.

We weren’t lucky that Arkansas decided to give a shit on the day after Thanksgiving.

We weren’t lucky that our QB got hurt, again, right before our conference championship game.

So, spare me the condescending bullshit.

Miles’ line of “undefeated in regulation” became a clever marketing line to pollsters. But the computers liked LSU too. Both man and machine could objectively look at what LSU accomplished and deem it surpassed all but Ohio State. Who LSU systematically destroyed in the National Championship game. When the dust settled, there was no doubt.

And yet, to hear people describe the team, it’s as if they were a phantom passing aimlessly through the night. The “worst champion of the BCS era.” And, of course, the continuously banal “well, of course, this is how THAT season wound up.”

It’s more fun to discuss LSU — nay, Louisiana — as dysfunctional accidents that happened upon fortune. It’s more fun to believe Miles pulled every last trick out from under his oversized hat and the gods were humored enough to reward him. It’s more fun to believe fairy tales.

But 2007 LSU isn’t fiction. 2007 LSU is cold, hard inevitability. 2007 LSU is the heart-stopping reality that hits at the end of it all. 2007 LSU is the most fun death you’ve ever had.