Rodney Dangerfield has to be an LSU fan.
The outlandish comedian’s famous catch phrase perfectly symbolizes the 2003 LSU football team’s national championship season and its coverage in the national media — no respect.
From day one, no one gave the Tigers a chance. Ranked preseason No. 15, LSU was off most of the national media’s radar and for good reason.
The Tigers were coming off a disappointing, injury-plagued 2002 season and the team had question marks at many key positions. The sentiment around college football was 2003 was going to belong to top-ranked Southeastern Conference teams such as Auburn and Georgia.
After handling three sub-par teams in undramatic fashion, the No. 10 Tigers had a date with No. 6 Georgia in Tiger Stadium on Sept. 27. ESPN GameDay had set up its pre-game TV show on campus, ready for the biggest SEC game of the season.
As a signal of things to come, most of the country’s college football experts picked Georgia to win. The Sunshine Scooter, Lee Corso did don the Tiger head gear on the show, but it probably was to get a rise out of the 10,000 or so fans camped outside the PMAC for GameDay more than because he thought the Tigers would win.
The Tigers did win and kept on winning except for a sluggish performance against a Florida team, and they proved to most people, at least those outside of Louisiana who think the state is all swampland and people riding around in boats, that LSU was no fluke.
For the final five or six weeks of the season, the trendy pick for the Sugar Bowl matchup was Oklahoma vs. USC. Both teams were playing dominant football, but there just didn’t seem to be any room for LSU to squeeze in.
Week after week, analysts like ESPN’s Trev Alberts and Mark May hyped up LSU’s opponents more than a big-budget action movie and gave all sorts of reasons why the Tigers would fall.
Auburn was going to bounce back and finish strong. It didn’t happen. Eli Manning was going to lead Ole Miss out of mediocrity and into the SEC Championship. Not this year. Georgia was going to win the SEC Championship because never in the history of college football has a team beaten another team twice in a season.
In short, LSU proved all “ye of little faith” wrong by handily beating Georgia, 34-13, to win the SEC Championship and have a shot at the national title.
Unfortunately, the Bowl Championship Series and the controversy surrounding which teams play for the national title game only helped to fuel the national media’s bias against LSU.
LSU overtook USC for the coveted No. 2 spot in the BCS rankings, thanks to crucial wins from other teams. Syracuse’s win over Notre Dame, Boise State’s win against Hawaii and LSU’s extra game against a quality opponent in the SEC title game, the Tigers’ strength of schedule improved just enough to squeeze past USC. The Trojans did not have to play a Pac-10 title game and had the luxury of playing in a conference full of soft teams.
The Tigers had a date with the Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl for the national title, but all was not right in the world of college football. OU’s 35-7 blowout loss to Kansas State in the Big XII Championship game propelled USC to No. 1 in the Associated Press and Coaches polls and opened the door for more controversy because the top team in the two main polls used to calculate the BCS was left out of the title game.
So instead of giving the usual monthlong hype usually reserved for the BCS title game, many in the mainstream media undermined the game and the system that set it up. People, who weeks before had no real qualms with the BCS, were suddenly ready to cast it aside and head back to the drawing board. All because the team they wanted to be in the game (USC) wasn’t there.
USC was stuck playing Michigan in the Rose Bowl for what ABC announcer Keith Jackson called “the human championship” on New Year’s Day. After the Trojans beat the Wolverines 28-14, the team had a little on-camera party trying to drum up support for their win and place as No. 1. Right on cue, many sports journalists concluded the AP would declare them national champions.
The Nokia Sugar Bowl on Jan. 4 became an afterthought. All the big-time media were there, but it was just to see how bad Oklahoma would demolish an overrated LSU team. Instead of coming to see the big game, they decided to take their ball and go home like a spoiled 10-year-old that didn’t get his way. What a bunch of haters.
After LSU dominated the Sooners 21-14, holding them to 154 yards of total offense, I passed Maisel in the Super Dome press box. He had a disappointed scowl on his face like he’d just eaten some bad sushi and had to make a fast break for the restroom.
I’d like to imagine other anti-LSU journalists like Alberts, May and talk show host Jim Rome all had similar facial expressions after watching the Sugar Bowl. And maybe they realized LSU had just as much skill and talent as USC, even if it wasn’t located in one of the nation’s top media markets.
They probably didn’t, though. Maisel’s next column then proceeded to talk about how USC would have beaten LSU 17-10 had the teams played. Who covers an event to write about how another, less-superior team would win if the said lesser team played the national champion? It doesn’t make much sense.
But like LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert jokingly said: “USC is the national champion the same way Al Gore is president.”
Of course the debate will rage on about which team was really No. 1 and which would come out on top if they’d ever played each other. All that is irrelevant now.
LSU has the ADT national championship trophy — the trophy that the college football powers on high decreed should go to the top team in the sport. USC has some rubber, scotch-taped AP trophy on its mantle.
As great as LSU’s run to the 2003 National Championship was to watch, it’s sickening that all the pouters, the shouters and the doubters in the national media couldn’t give LSU at least an ounce of recognition for reaching the top of the mountain. No respect.