The only thing they might have done better Monday night is name Joe Burrow one of the 11 greatest players in the history of college football.
Capping the sport's sesquicentennial season, LSU downed Clemson, the previous year's national champion, with a mighty crash, 42-25 before a de facto home crowd at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.
Burrow performed not only like college football's player of the year but the best college quarterback anyone has seen. He was on screen more than Donald Trump, the nation's 45th president watching LSU for the second time this season and, as against Alabama, win going away.
Perhaps Melania Trump, dressed like the game was being played outside instead of under a roof, looked more uncomfortable than Clemson. The first lady might know as much about pass defense as Clemson's secondary, No. 8 in particular, singed more than an overcooked steak.
Burrow made a strong case for climbing on the stage at halftime with such as Roger Staubach, a fellow Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback (Navy in 1963) and ranked No. 11 on the all-time college dream team. The fresh-faced kid from Ohio belonged up there with No. 2 Herschel Walker, the highest ranked Southeastern Conference player and behind only Jim Brown, who at Syracuse also earned a reputation as the greatest lacrosse player ever.
In this guy's opinion, the only one who outshone Burrow Monday night was Oscar-nominated actress Scarlett Johansson in a trailer for the spring release "Black Widow".
Passing for five touchdowns against Clemson and an NCAA-record 60 over the 15-game season, Burrow provided the football savior LSU had been seeking since the late Billy Cannon, its only previous Heisman winner (1958). Whereas Cannon was a hometown hero, playing at LSU after starring at Istrouma High School, Burrow migrated south after three years at Ohio State. Although Burrow did not become starting quarterback until the Monday before the first game in 2018, he became an LSU legend almost overnight, throwing a school-record 158 passes without an interception.
Roy Lang III, writing in the Shreveport Times, says Burrow belongs with Cannon on the Mount Rushmore of LSU football. Comparing their college careers, Burrow fleshed out his legend better.
Cannon remains a Louisiana hero despite serving 2 1/2 years in prison for his involvement in a counterfeiting scheme. His 89-yard punt return for a touchdown in a 7-3 win over Ole Miss on Halloween night 1959 is justifiably famous, though film is scratchy and the crowd noise at Tiger Stadium drowns out the radio announcer's call. (My dad, who cared for neither team, both with a knack of beating Arkansas, thought LSU foolish for consenting to a rematch against Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl, the Rebels winning 21-0.)
Burrow would not have been the first Heisman winner to flame out after winning the award. But in his last two games, LSU's No. 9 (same number as the New Orleans Saints' Rushmore candidate, Drew Brees) went out No. 1 in every sense of the word.
Feast on these stats: Since striking his Heisman pose, Burrow totaled (1) 956 yards passing, (2) 80 yards rushing and (3) 14 touchdowns -- 12 passing.
"That was in eight quarters. Against the Nos. 3 and 4 teams in the nation," Lang writes, prompting Tiger sophomore receiver Terrace Marshall Jr. to say, "It's amazing to be a part of history."
Clemson did not play badly, mind you. Dabo Swinney's team had not won 29 straight games, the school's second national championship in three years included, just by getting to the stadium on time. An Alabama guy who learned the game on Gene Stallings' 1992 national-championship team, Swinney played field position early and defensive coordinator Brent Venables' unit chased Burrow all over the yard.
Clemson can congratulate itself, if it wishes, by noting that it was the first time all season Burrow completed less than 70 percent of his passes (63 percent in the title game). And that the Atlantic Coast Conference's dominant program of the decade recorded five sacks.
Statistics, they say, are for the losers, but not always.
Though 30 yards short of his personal-record 493 yards against Oklahoma in the semifinals, Burrow grew increasingly confident and the Clemson defense equally discouraged. Completing 31 of 49, Burrow in time solved Clemson's pass rush with 14 carries for 58 yards and a touchdown. Clemson's defense could not get off the field, allowing LSU to hold the ball for 34:45 and run 79 plays to its own 64.
What they couldn't measure on the stat sheet was the confidence Burrow imparted to his team this season and last. Marshall nutshelled the Tigers' feeling about the quarterback after the Oklahoma game: "I want to catch a touchdown and tell my kids I played for a national championship with Joe Burrow."
LSU football has been serious business since Huey P. Long, the Kingfish of Louisiana politics, marched on the field with the band before games. An LSU home game is like something out of Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men," combining the excitement of a state fair, a political rally and an old-time religious camp meeting (with Broderick Crawford or Sean Penn as Willie Stark, a character from Warren's 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel based on Long)
A proud football program, one with tremendous high-school talent within its borders, LSU kept sending highly decorated players to the pros but continually left their proud fans hanging. The 2003 Tigers won the school's first national title since the Cannon-led squad of 1958, though that triumph was short-lived when coach Nick Saban bolted to the NFL's Miami Dolphins.
Les Miles replaced Saban in Baton Rouge, and although from the Midwest and slightly off-center at times, munching grass on the sideline during games, went over like red beans and rice on the bayou. Alabama, luring Saban back into the college ranks, became LSU's major rival, although a 9-6 win at Tuscaloosa in 2011 keyed an SEC-championship season for the Tigers.
Alabama evened that score with a 21-0 victory in a national-title rematch in New Orleans, sending LSU into a tumble from which it did not recover until Burrow hit town. The Tigers wasted lots of talent in the 2010s, a decade of six SEC national champions. The grumbling against Miles grew so strong that LSU almost fired him after the 2015 season, finally ripping off the coach's buttons four games into 2016.
Miles aide Ed Orgeron, rehabbing his career at LSU after a three-year bust at Ole Miss, hung on after finishing the year 6-2, LSU botching a search that it thought would yield Tom Herman (who went to Texas instead). Though he speaks mangled English that it is said only he and his family and LSU fans understand, Orgeron proved the perfect fit for a team whose fan base cheers "Geaux Tigers."
Football-wise, Orgeron made some key hires, former LSU quarterback Steve Ensminger as offensive coordinator and Joe Brady (from the New Orleans Saints) as passing-game coordinator/wide receivers coach.
Looking over his roster, Orgeron told Ensminger late in 2018, "We've got to the spread next year." "I agree," Ensminger said. "Let's get somebody who knows it, and let him put it in."
In came Brady this year and off went the Tigers into the stratosphere.
Any successful football team needs a Twelfth Man, and in LSU's case this season, it was provided by the school's two Heisman Trophy winners. Billy Cannon passed away on May 20, 2018 -- the same day Joe Burrow officially joined LSU as a graduate transfer.
"You can't help but think he's still here watching," says Cannon's daughter, Bunnie. "He kind of passed the torch and went home."
Sports on 01/15/2020