MULE’: Looking For Some Sense From Georgia Loss

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Now, if someone told you beforehand that LSU would score 38 points against the Georgia Bulldogs, would you have been elated?

by Marty Mule’
Tiger Rag Featured Columnist

Of course you would have.

Generally speaking, that point total should be more than enough to win a football game.

But not with these Bayou Bengals.

For the second time in three games, LSU – with a ballyhooed defense that was supposed to be a major strength as the Tigers defended their 2007 national championship – got mowed for 50 points in humiliating defeats.

What happened?

Seven games into what was expected to be a title-contending season, one thing is clear: this LSU unit cannot defend against a multi-dimensional offense. The Tigers’ only two notable victories, against Auburn and South Carolina, were against mediocre teams overall, with limited offensive capability. Two opponents, Florida and Georgia, that could both run and pass, buzz-bombed LSU for a combined 103 points.

This is not to say the Tigers should be unbeaten. It is to say nobody gave any indication that this LSU team would be beaten to a pulp.

Twice.

Why things happen on a football field are usually far more complex, but it’s hard to escape two conclusions about this team: (1) either this staff really was winning the last few years with Nick Saban’s players, or (2) the current defensive players are being coached down.

It’s hard to find any other sound reasons.

Sad to say, there may be more to come, with Alabama and the best Ole Miss team in years on the horizon.

And please don’t point out the Tigers get them both at home. We saw what that was worth against Georgia.

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Next up, of course, is Tulane, LSU’s oldest and, at one time, most hated rival.

No more, thanks to a variety of reasons, but at one time both schools brought out the virulent emotions of the other. The largest crowds in the South used to crowd into Tulane Stadium, then the largest football venue in the South, to see them play.

Each played a great role in the history of the other. It’s always been fascinating to realize that in 1924, in the first game at Tiger Stadium, “the worse place in the world to be a visiting team,’’ according to Bear Bryant, Tulane gave LSU a 13-0 baptism.

Two years before that, Tulane figured in the first traffic survey in Baton Rouge. The day of the game, the survey showed that 2,280 automobiles chugged into town. Also noted were nine motorcycles, 32 horseback riders, 21 buggies, 50 horse-drawn vehicles, two bicycles, one tractor, and, the hardiest fans, 30 people who hiked in.

This is how much the Green Wave occupied the Tigers’ mindset: In 1949, a year after Tulane administered a monstrous 46-0 whipping on LSU – at the time the worse differential in the series – Coach Gus Tinsley started practicing for the Greenies the week before their meeting at halftime of another game.

Tinsley knew full well that Tulane, a well-oiled football machine powered by All-American fullback Eddie Price, was more than capable of burying LSU again if the Wave got rolling. And given an opportunity, knew Tulane would.

“The week before the Tulane,” Charles Cusimano, a guard on the ’49 Tigers and later a member of the school’s Board of Supervisors, “we had a big lead over Southeastern in the third quarter. Gus Tinsley sent the first and second teams outside the stadium, to a field behind the South End, and we scrimmaged while the scrubs finished the game. Ed McKeever and Norm Cooper, Tinsley’s chief assistants, came out with us and we actually began putting in some of the things we planned to use against Tulane. Can you imagine doing this today?”

McKeever, a longtime associate of Notre Dame’s silver-tongued Frank Leahy, motivated the team in the days leading up to Tulane.

“During the week,’’ Cusimano said, “he talked to us in groups. Real emotional talks. Before the game it was right out of Knute Rockne. He started out softly, then built up. At the end he was screaming.’’

Kenny Konz remembered just before the kickoff the spellbinding pregame oratory, given with tears in McKeever’s eyes, of a baby he said died in his arms and how she’d be looking down, watching the game and pulling for the Tigers.’’

“The most amazing thing of that day,’’ Konz said, “was that nobody was hurt as we all hit the door trying to get out on that field.’’

LSU upset the Greenies – and took their expected place in the Sugar Bowl.

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Marty Mule’ can be reached at MJM981@Charter.net.