First half has been one long, strange LSD, er, LSU trip

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Really, you have to admire how Stanford has gotten back in the Rose Bowl picture.

What? That's not the headline from here?

Les Miles' Tigers take Florida's best shot and still prevail. (AP)

It certainly has nothing do with USC being the best team of all time, much less Saturday night.

Maybe it's this: The season is officially an LSD trip. Not a downer where the ceiling is dripping or your mom turns into a spider monkey.

More like a soothing stroll through Valhalla, where you meet God and his "Hi, May I Help You" nametag says Jim Harbaugh.

Wake up? Already there, pal. The rush started about noon Saturday and didn't stop until the last beverage was consumed here at Tiger Stadium on Saturday night.

Which is to say it's still going on.

No. 1 LSU's earth-shaking win over Florida merely blew the foam off another brew for the tailgaters who didn't get in the stadium. They were the lucky ones if they had a satellite dish. They could cheer their Tigers and had the ability to pull in the obscure network Versus, which beamed the USC loss to tens of people around the country.

That would be an estimated 50,000 outside without a ticket just to drink in the atmosphere.

Big ol' pun, intended.

Jacob Hester's game-winning run with 69 second left was not the end, but the beginning ... of an all-night celebration, of the second half of the schedule and of a continuation of the strangest BCS season this side of Jeff Sagarin's index or Wes Colley's matrix.

You want to believe that LSU has unified the poll title belt after USC was beaten by Stanford. On Sunday, the Tigers will be at the top of the AP, coaches and Harris polls by a substantial margin. Or should be.

But if the first six weeks of the season have taught us anything, it's to not bet on anything. Not on Harbaugh, who famously said before the season that the Trojans were the best of all time, then sandbagged his ass off.