When the climbing pitch of some 92,000 fans reaches its apex at the penultimate moment, just before a football is sent tumbling end-over-end to the opposite side of the Tiger Stadium at 6 p.m. Saturday night, 236 days of agony will finally be over. Despite Mother Nature’s best attempt at prolonging LSU’s time in football purgatory, football is back in Baton Rouge. LSU – both the football team and the community that relies on it – needs this new beginning. And it needs it bad. It needs to feel the rhythmic thump of drums that churns it into a teeming mass just before it hears the four famous hair-raising notes. It needs to see the Tigers’ shiny new toy with the rocket on his right shoulder dropping bombs into the arms of streaking wide receivers. And most importantly, it needs to forget that the month long detour to college football hell ever happened by thoroughly dominating North Texas. Remember that month? Of course you do. Things got off to a bad start on Jan. 5, when Dutchtown safety Landon Collins, considered one of the best prospects in the country, spurned the hometown Tigers and committed to hated rival Alabama. Things got sickening Jan. 9, when LSU’s perfect season was irreparably marred in a 21-0 slaughter on its own state’s turf at the hands of that hated rival. Things spiraled on Jan. 16, when the stud quarterback recruit with the perfect name, Gunner Kiel, decided he’d prefer South Bend, Ind. to the Red Stick. All of a sudden, nobody wanted a part of LSU. And that’s why nobody wants to talk about 2011 and the early parts of 2012 – not now anyway. Nobody wants to relive the season many were hailing as possibly the best season ever put together before the Big Easy Beatdown. In a little more than three hours, the Tigers had gone from the best team in college football history to the laughingstock of the country for myriad reasons that have been hashed and rehashed so much they don’t need to be discussed in this column. Saturday will mark the 236th day since the Allstate BCS National Championship Game. Much has happened in those nearly eight months, but almost nothing to assuage the sour taste. When introducing LSU’s recruiting class on national signing day, LSU coach Les Miles took some heat for publicly ripping Kiel, saying, “There was a gentleman from Indiana that thought about coming to the Bayou state. He did not necessarily have the chest and the ability to lead a program.” The team’s most recognizable figure, Tyrann Mathieu, was mysteriously dismissed shortly before reportedly checking in to a drug rehab facility in Houston. But the negativity surrounding the Tigers and their tumultuous eight months couldn’t dampen the excitement – or expectations. LSU will storm Death Valley Saturday night as the nation’s No. 3 team in the Associated Press Poll and the No. 1 team in the USA Today Coaches Poll. The defense that suffocated every high-flying and ground-pounding offense thrown at it returns most of its stalwart core. The new-look offense led by junior quarterback Zach Mettenberger gives the Tigers a dimension they have lacked for far too long. But the real excitement comes from the reunion of fans. LSU’s campus will transform into the world’s largest group therapy session. The LSU family will grieve together over spilled beer and gumbo. They’ll congregate next to the Indian Mounds, the Parade Grounds and all along Nicholson Drive and recall that interception by safety Eric Reid in Tuscaloosa, or the shifty touchdown reception by wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. against Kentucky and smile. Soon, maybe aided by alcohol’s influence, last year’s inauspicious end will fade to the back of the collective mind. The deluge brought on by Hurricane Isaac washed the campus clean just in time for thousands of happy fans to fill it with their tailgate refuse before filing into the new Tiger Stadium gates. They will swarm to their seats and buzz until the thump of a foot striking a football officially turns the open wound into a scar. The renewed passion of Saturdays in Tiger Stadium is the only thing that can put the anguish of last season’s end to rest. Tomorrow, it’s finally here. ____ Contact Luke Johnson at [email protected]; Twitter: @lukejohnson44