LSU, Coach O, and the Return of Delusional Optimism

I am not going to lie, I thought long and hard about retiring Delusional Optimism. The thing was often centered around Les Miles, our gloriously goofy head coach who simply made the game more fun. It wasn’t always about winning, it was about loving your college football fandom instead of mourning it.

However, this has always been bigger than just one man. It’s about all of us, and what defines us as college football fans. We’re the fanbase that looks at the world and wonders, “Can I deep fry that?” Ole Miss may think they have never lost a party, but that’s because we have the common courtesy not to keep score.

But jambalaya beats cold fried chicken every day of the week and we all know it.

It’s a whole new era for LSU football. We have got a brand new coach, a brand new offensive coordinator, and a defensive coordinator whose only working on Year Two. We’ve got a new star linebackers, new guys keeping up the mantle of DBU, and a new receiver corps. Hell, we even got ourselves a brand new Mike the Tiger.

You know what we still got? The best pass rusher in the nation, a Heisman contender at running back, and a deep, experienced defense that is ready to go kill someone. We also still got the best damn fans in the country, who put the Welcome in Welcome to Death Valley. We want the opposing fans to be well fed and boozed up before we shatter their will and their eardrums.

Look, we can try and act like Alabama fans and still somehow be miserable sons of bitches despite winning about a million games over the past decades. Or we can be Aggie fans, always thinking that this time Lucy is going to let them kick the football.

But me? I aim to misbehave. Because they all wish they were a part of the loudest, biggest, drunkest party in the college football universe. Nothing stops. LSU is going to keep on winning because that’s what this team does. It wins so much that we have ceased to be impressed by winning a lot. And we’re going to keep throwing tailgates that could very well bring about the end of times. But what a way to go.

There’s been a lot of talk in the is offseason about mitigating expectations. About worrying more about the process than the results. Of keeping our hopes low so that whatever scraps fall off the table, we’ll be grateful for that little bit of goodness.

This is Loser Talk. You wanna do loser talk, I can kindly suggest another blog for y’all to follow.

We just fired the most successful coach in the program’s history who was also beloved around the college football world to boot. That’s because while he won a whole bunch, he didn’t win enough. That is a statement of purpose…

Being Real Good Isn’t Good Enough.

LSU had the second best record in the SEC West last year. It has the second best two-year conference record in the West. And the second best three-year, four-year, five-year, six-year, seven-year records and so on. We’ve won a lot. Wins are fun. We should celebrate every single win because wins are precious. Football season is fleeting, and you have to grab hold of it and suck the marrow out of it. You got to treasure every little bit of it. As much fun as winning is, it’s important that we recognize that second place isn’t good enough.

High expectations are good. We here at Poseur HQ (Home of Delusional Optimism) do not shrink from high expectations, we embrace them. We play this game to win, and we’re not going to start the year by lining up our alibis.

It’s going to be hard. I know it. You know it. Coach O knows. Even Mike the Tiger knows it. The Alabama Dynasty is at its peak right now. They have made the playoff in all three years of its existence, making it to the title game twice, and winning it once. Bama has won half of the national titles awarded in the past eight years. They have won the last three SEC titles and four of the last five.

Hey, it’s always darkest before the dawn. I know it’s pretty damn dark right now, but that’s what is going to make it all the better when we finally take those bastards down.

Besides, this is our fault. The world counts on us to stop the Red Menace, and we have come up short. What? You think Auburn is gonna do it? Yeah, they have the one other conference title in that five-year run of Bama dominance. They have also finished dead last in the West twice during that span. You can’t count on Auburn to do anything save collect mascots and NCAA violations.

We accept that it is our duty to dethrone Alabama because college football is supposed to be fun. And Nick Saban and his horde of humorless sycophants are trying to suck that joy away from the game by endlessly complaining about every little quirk until it is all seamlessly part of his Process. You want Process, go root for IBM. LSU is the last defender of all that is good and right in our wonderfully weird sport: we’re nothing but fun.

I love the chaos. I love the wild and wacky. Orgeron isn’t the same kind of crazy as Les, but he’s got a healthy dose of it. He’s come into the job and immediately torn up the depth charts and opened up competition for every spot on the roster. It’s a new regime, and if that means riding a whole bunch of new players into the wild blue yonder, then that’s what we’re gonna do.

This is a year of new starts and of fresh chances. But the one thing that does not change is the expectations. Finishing second was not good enough, we’re in this thing to win the damn title. Yes, that means going through the biggest, baddest team on the block.

I’m sick and tired of worrying about Alabama. Let them worry about us. We are coming for them. We are coming for everybody. This party doesn’t stop. Loser talk time is over. No more lowering of the bar. The bar says, WIN!

So now let’s go do it.