The champ is down, vowing to rise again
Published 5:00 pm Wednesday, December 2, 2020
Scooter Hobbs
Ed Orgeron always did look, sound and act like the regular good guy who Hollywood would dream up to sell his soul for one magical championship.
This season is a little over the top, however.
A remake of “Damn Yankees?”
More like the college football version, in gruff, garbled Cajunese: “Bring on Bama: We coming!”
But that must have been one woozy of a lopsided deal the devil and Coach O made.
It got him last year’s perfect season, one in which all the stars aligned so perfectly that LSU 2019 is on the short list of the greatest teams of all time.
This year, not so much.
For most of this 3-4 season, it seems as if fans have accepted the theory that it’s the devil collecting his due … and would do it again.
Now it seems to be testing their patience.
Just one thing after another, none of it good news.
LSU finally gets its bearings in the secondary and then the offensive line can’t block anybody.
Early on it looked like LSU at least found a reasonable facsimile to Joe Burrow. The latest on that front was Orgeron chewing out true freshman TJ Finley for a pick-six.
But maybe the low light, absurd division, the what-can-go-wrongnext moment came mere seconds before halftime at Texas A&M with the Aggies lining up for a long field goal attempt. That’s when the Tigers unearthed the obscure penalty for “disconcerting signals,” which evidently has something to do with distracting your opponent in an untoward manner. Whatever it is, you can bet LSU last year would never have gone near it. But defensive end Neil Farrell did Saturday, and the Aggies got 5 yards closer.
Just another reason to scratch your head at 2020.
And it’s not over yet. It almost certainly will get worse.
With Alabama this week, Florida the next and presumably the Ole Miss Fighting Lane Trains to finish, LSU may not win another game this year. Or maybe it will have to wait until the bowl season.
Oh, yes, this is the year, of course, that any team, no matter the record, can go to a bowl game — which, if nothing else, should make for some interesting matchups.
Surely there will be an invitation to one of the obscure festivals for the defending national champions — assuming LSU has enough players left and are still interested in going.
Meanwhile, Orgeron has to dread rolling out of bed each morning.
After the frustrating night at Texas A&M, Orgeron was greeted Sunday morning with the news that his best player, receiver Terrace Marshall, was opting out for the season.
“I never thought this would happen this week,” Orgeron said.
Really? Why should this week be any different?
“We got to deal with it,” Orgeron said. “This is a year we’ve had to deal with a lot of stuff.”
OK, my mind was made up in August that any player who opted out of this pandemic season, for whatever reason, should have their coaches’, teammates’ and fan base’s blessings, no question asked.
Marshall is no different.
It was just a bad look that his announcement came less than two weeks after his impassioned plea in a players-only meeting to stick together and keep fighting through the adversity.
“I thought when he said it he meant it, and the team believed him,” Orgeron said. “I think that obviously he had a change of heart.”
Then he was gone.
There’s a lot of that going around in college football in recent weeks.
Remember in August, with the college football season very much in doubt, how the players were so passionate in begging the authorities to please, please let them pursue their passion to play football?
What they really meant, apparently, was that they desperately wanted to sis-boombah and play their hearts out for dear ol’ State U. … as long as things were going good.
Again, hard to blame Marshall, who is likely holding an NFL first-round lottery ticket and could do nothing but lose it while LSU, realistically, is going about the business of preparing for next year to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
Replacing Marshall’s production — he had just over half of LSU’s total offense Saturday — may be the least of Orgeron’s newest problems.
Remarkably, LSU did gets its two most spirited efforts of the season in the two games following Marshall’s oration. Even on defense. Especially the defense.
He didn’t exactly practice what he had preached.
Now Orgeron has to keep up morale on a team that he’s hinted is, not surprisingly, short on leadership.
Right now there’s not much Orgeron can do other than keep putting out fires and try to get this season finished with as little embarrassment as possible.
“We built a championship program,” Orgeron said. “We will be champions again. Recruiting is going well. We got some great young players. We have some stuff we have to get fixed, I know we have to fix it. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.”
I wouldn’t bet against him.
One thing for sure, though. So far he’s built them a lot better than he defends them.
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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at shobbs@americanpress.com
Sam Craft