Black Friday darkens season for distraught LSU
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Les Miles entered the room, walked straight to the lectern, took that tight, white hat off his head, rubbed his fingers through his hair and almost immediately started second-guessing himself. It was a classic example of a man fully aware of what was coming, because when you blow any chance at a national title by losing at home to an unranked team, well, you're going to get second-guessed, and I suppose it's best to beat the masses to the punch.
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| Les Miles and LSU get the heave-ho. (Getty Images) |
No question, this cost LSU.
And it was expensive as hell, a price in direct contrast to the sales that had otherwise reasonable humans lining up at their favorite stores well before dawn in hopes of getting that new HDTV at a record low. Yep, Black Friday took on new meaning here at Death Valley, where the LSU Tigers entered as the nation's top-ranked team and left on the wrong end of a 50-48 triple-overtime thriller that thrust Arkansas' Darren McFadden back into the Heisman race.
"He's a Heisman Trophy guy," Arkansas coach Houston Nutt said after watching his All-American run 32 times for 206 yards and three touchdowns while also completing three of six passes for 34 yards and another score. "The guy deserves the trophy. It's not right for his name not to be mentioned as No. 1 right now. He blocks. He catches. He quarterbacks. He throws. He reads. He runs the football with passion and determination, and he really deserves a look."
That is, if you can find him.
Seriously, McFadden was all over the place, lining up in different formations and scaring the bejeebees out of LSU's vaunted defense, or at least the guys wearing the uniforms that used to represent the most-heralded defense in the country. The Tigers were so worried about McFadden that they let Peyton Hillis break a 65-yard touchdown run up the middle and catch a 24-yard touchdown pass in the same place, proving that No. 5 is just as dangerous as a decoy as he is a runner or kick returner.
Anyway, McFadden was fabulous.
But you know that by now.
So let's go ahead and move on to the real story, because the greatness of the Arkansas star isn't for what this game will be remembered. Instead, it'll go down in history as the day LSU squandered its national championship aspirations and in turn added another wacky chapter to this already wacky season. And honestly, it's been a long time coming, because it's not hard to look back and see these Tigers have been getting worse and worse pretty much every week since opening with a 45-0 pounding of a Mississippi State team that ultimately won seven games.
After that, it was a 48-7 win over Virginia Tech.
Then a 44-0 win over Middle Tennessee State.
And if you see that version of the Tigers anywhere, tell them the SEC Championship Game is next week in Atlanta, and it'd be wise to show up. Because frankly, they've been missing lately, rebounding from a triple-overtime loss at Kentucky on Oct. 13 by barely beating Auburn (30-24) and barely beating Alabama (41-34) before struggling to pull away from Ole Miss (41-24) last week, all of which led to Senior Day here at Tiger Stadium.
