The LSU football team stood at the pinnacle of college football when it took the Superdome turf last Monday night to take on an arch-nemesis on the heels of a charmed 13-0 regular season.
Nine days later, LSU fans are still digesting the fallout from the Tigers’ lifeless 21-0 loss to the Crimson Tide in the BCS National Championship. Questions about everything from recruiting impact to potential locker-room conflict have permeated the air of invincibility the program enjoyed during a 2011 Southeastern Conference title run.
Prized quarterback recruit Gunner Kiel pulled his purple-and-gold commitment Tuesday, instead choosing a Notre Dame squad that hasn’t seriously contended for a national title since Lou Holtz roamed the Irish sidelines in the 1990s.
Rumors of pregame turmoil in the Tiger locker room have swirled around message boards, blogs and disgruntled conversations amongst LSU fans.
National and local pundits have swarmed LSU coach Les Miles with criticism for a passive game plan and refusal to mix up the quarterback play when senior quarterback Jordan Jefferson proved ineffective during the BCS Championship.
Three key components of a potential 2012 Tiger juggernaut — defensive tackle Michael Brockers, cornerback Morris Claiborne and wideout Rueben Randle — jetted for the NFL just more than 48 hours after the title game. A fourth — wide receiver and eternal LSU cheerleader Russell Shepard — nearly did the same.
If LSU’s stock was at its apex less than two weeks ago, it’s not a stretch to see the Tigers tumble as a potentially lingering crash.
So, what is the Tigers’ value, both within SEC country and throughout the college football world, in the hyper-competitive NCAA marketplace?
“LSU is still a top-5 program, and I would still buy [their stock],” said prominent SB Nation college football blogger Spencer Hall. “But LSU is as fickle and unique as the state of Louisiana. Nothing that happens to that team in the future would surprise me. It’s uneasy if you’re a fan, but thrilling to watch.”
Barrett Sallee, an SEC columnist for College Football News, said the title-game fiasco was likely a bump in the road for a stable giant.
“As players, sometimes you learn to crawl before you walk, and LSU is a relatively young team, still,” Sallee said. “I don’t see LSU falling off drastically, but I’m much more wary of the Tigers than I was all season. A loss like that can be hard to shake.”
The BCS era is flush with examples of embarrassing championship game losses ending prosperous, title-level runs.
There was Florida State’s 2-point showing against Oklahoma in 2000, the Sooners’ 55-19 beatdown at the hands of USC in 2004 and heavily-favored Ohio State’s 41-14 no-show against Florida in 2006.
The Seminoles, Sooners and Buckeyes have yet to win another championship since their respective losses, and big-game stigmas followed each for years after the initial sting of the title-game losses wore off.
“As painful as the loss was, it’s still only one game, and, if anything, it might provide a mission for next year’s team, which could be better anyway,” said ESPN.com college football writer Ivan Maisel. “I’m buying LSU, with only a slight pause, even if the room for improvement is considerably small.”
Hall said LSU’s stability comes down to its successfully enigmatic coach — Les Miles — but believes the post-game rumors have proliferated from the Mad Hatter’s quirky nature and his unusually docile game plan against the Tide.
“LSU is now at the point where the only implausible explanation for that game would be the rational one,” Hall said. “When the unexplainable —like 92 total yards — happens, you make up a monster to explain it. Les is kind of in his own zone there, almost like R. Kelly. That ‘mad genius’ territory where his failures are so strange that you wonder what was spectacular about them.”
Rarely in college football has a team or coach ever gone from near-legendary status to a critical target for the fan base in a month, let alone the three hours it took LSU and Miles last Monday. And recruiting fallout has seemingly followed nearly as quickly.
Despite dismissing the notion that Kiel’s change of heart was tied to LSU’s quarterback shortcomings in the title game, Sallee said the Tigers’ consistently underachieving offense is more concerning on the recruiting trail.
“The absolute lack of offense, it being so poor on the biggest stage, just has to turn some recruits away, though Gunner probably was just being 18 [years old] and uncertain,” Sallee said. “LSU has been rich in talent on offense recently, but that hasn’t translated to a feared attack. An offense-minded recruiting class is necessary, because the defense can’t be at 2011 level every year.”
Maisel said the chance for redemption in 2012, along with a supposed savior under center in Zach Mettenberger, could turn the past week’s turmoil into a springboard for future dominance.
“The chance to redeem themselves is powerful, as Alabama showed,” Maisel said. “Those players, if they learned from what went wrong, have the talent to make everyone forget about Jan. 9 and show the world that is not LSU football.”
Sallee said an immediate response in 2012 to the disastrous title-game collapse might be necessary to prevent a hangover for the program.
“If LSU lets that monkey sit on its back, then that’s where you run the risk of the ‘Bama beatdown becoming a legacy,” Sallee said. “They might need to get it done next year, because we’ve seen teams in football and across sports — like the Atlanta Braves — spiral after championship blowouts. There’s no doubt LSU will be back on that stage, but winning [a championship] soon might be a necessity for elite status.”
 
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Contact Chris Abshire at [email protected]