It’s taken 45 years, but LSU sits atop the ranks of college football’s elite. The cliche is that defense wins championships, and that was no truer than tonight’s Sugar Bowl, and LSU’s 21-14 victory over Oklahoma. The #1 defense in the country rose to the challenge and dominated Oklahoma for most of the game, putting up 14 of LSU’s 21 points, off of Sooner turnovers.
Oklahoma is to be commended for not giving up, for making the Tigers earn the title. LSU looked a little gassed in the 4th quarter, but they dug down and played their guts out to secure the win.
Having grown up in Baton Rouge from the time I was five, I didn’t have any professional sports teams to look to. For me, and thousands of other kids, LSU football, and later basketball and baseball, was where it was, and still is, at. That is one of the central reasons why I prefer collegiate sports over professional (hockey being the notable exception, but even there, the college game is great). I was going to LSU football games before I ever became a student at LSU. As a member of the Boy Scouts, we served as ushers at the football games.
Then to go to LSU for four years, being a part of that great tradition as a member of the honor guard presenting the colors at each game, and to see that it has finally culminated in a national championship for our school, and our state, is just a tremendous rush.
A USC-LSU matchup would have been nice; it was certainly the one I would have preferred, even if the outcome for LSU was different. But I can live with a co-championship, and the Trojans and the Tigers can live with it, too. The BCS needs to get its act together, since its formation was to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
That doesn’t take anything away from the best Tiger football team in over four decades, and the 2003 NCAA College Football Champions.
GEAUX TIGERS!!!
Posted by retrophisch at January 4, 2004 11:52 PM | TrackBack