Enough time has passed to ask, What if?

Published 8:24 am Friday, January 6, 2017

LSU sure is generating a lot of next-year anticipation for a team that went 8-4.

Winning the bowl game in such dominating fashion against Louisville surely didn’t hurt. Seriously, the Cardinals really scored 63 points against Florida State?

But, bottom line: it was still an 8-4 record, and even if you want to assume a victory in the canceled game against South Alabama, it’s still four losses any optimistic way you want to look at it.

That’s the kind of record that Vanderbilt gets excited about, not LSU.

Yet it seems most LSU cans can’t wait to see next year, with a new offensive coordinator (and offense) from the start of the season and with Dave Aranda’s diabolical defenses still on the other side.

Never mind that, based on talent and experience, the 2016 was the season that LSU should have been pointing toward.

Ed Orgeron, in his own gravel-accented way, has everybody suddenly shooting for the Cajun moon — even after a season that, by any LSU measure, was a disappointment.

Confusing, in a way.

But then again …

LSU really was close to being a very special team.

That’s probably true in most seasons that don’t meet expectations.

But, it was more so this time. It was THIS close.

You can make the case, without too drastic of a leap from logic, that LSU was three plays from being in the College Football Playoff — or two plays and 1 second, if you will.

These aren’t excuses, it’s just a fun exercise to play.

So, just imagine. What if LSU had a couple of mulligans on the 2016 season?

You know what I’m talking about. A mulligan like the one you might take when playing golf by yourself, convinced that the topped shot would have never happened if you were concentrating in a real match.

So drop another ball or three on LSU’s season and let’s play the what-if game.

It’s somewhat based in reality in that none of LSU’s victories was really ever in doubt.

There was no danger of things evening out.

If you’re saying “That’s football,” you’re spoiling the thesis, but you’re absolutely right.

So don’t be such a spoilsport. Just play along.

In the season opener — Wisconsin 16, LSU 14 — despite not playing well LSU was in field goal range with a first down with just over a minute to play.

Brandon Harris threw an interception, Wisconsin ran out the clock.

There’s no guarantee LSU makes the field goal, but we’re already knee-deep in hypotheticals here so hush.

The next loss — Auburn 18, LSU 13 — is a really touchy. We know what would have happened if the clock had not expired an instant before the final snap. We know because LSU ran the play and Auburn defended it in good faith, and D.J Chark caught a touchdown pass from Danny Etling.

Officials originally even signaled a winning touchdown, and the Tigers had quite a celebration.

They eventually got it right — somebody in the video booth noticed that the game clock expired before the snap — but being a half-second late probably trumps a do-over in this exercise.

Flash forward to the final home game — Florida 16, LSU 10 — for another frustrating final play of the game.

It also required a video review before being sorted out, but it was pretty obvious that Derrius Guice was stacked up well short of the goal.

What nobody knew until the postgame inquisition was that Guice went the wrong way on the play, forcing an awkward pitch and a stumbling run up the middle. Astute observers quickly noted that if he’d bolted to his left for the planned quick pitch, he might have done casual somersaults into the end zone.

A True Believer might even find something in Alabama 10, LSU 0, because it was scoreless for three quarters. But at some point LSU would have had to score and, even in a thorough postmortem, there has been no evidence unearthed that might have happened.

Still, if LSU is 10-1 with the lone loss being the biggest scare No. 1 Alabama got all season, then the playoff selection committee has some serious reconsidering to do.

LSU’s case would have had just as much merit as Ohio State or especially Washington.

We’ll never know.

But the real bug in this exercise was that fateful half-second against Auburn.

If you turn back the clock, it changes everything.

For better? For worse? Who knows?

But if LSU gets that play off in time, head coach Les Miles doesn’t get fired the next day. If Miles doesn’t get fired, Orgeron doesn’t get hired as the interim head coach, he doesn’t capture everybody’s imagination and eventually get the job full-time.

We’ll never know how that might have gone.

Still, given the optimism running so rampant with Orgeron, the real question is this: Is the trade-off of coming so close to a magical season worth the final result of where the program sits now?

Discuss.

l

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com