15-0. LSU is the new national champion

Joe Burrow demonstrated why he won the Heisman as he passed for 5 TDs and ran for another, leading LSU to 600 yards of offense from scrimmage.

LSU won by 17, but that’s misleading. The boys from Baton Rouge pulled away a bit at the end, but Clemson was up by 10 at one point, and it was 28-25 late in the third quarter. The two teams left no doubt that they were exactly where they belonged – as the last men standing.

LSU won only one championship in the 20th century (1958), and even that one was disputed. There was no official championship game back then, and there were three major polls declaring champions. Two of them called it for LSU, but the football writers association picked Iowa. (That seemed like a questionable call, given that Iowa had a loss and a tie while LSU was 11-0.) 1

The Tigers have certainly made up for that in the 21st century. This is their third national championship in this millennium despite the fact that they have to play in the same conference as mighty Alabama, which has won five flags of their own, and Florida, which has two titles. Add one more for Auburn, and that means the SEC has won 11 of the 20 in this century.

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FOOTNOTE:

1. They sure played a lot of ties in the old days. For example, the 1958 Big Ten had four teams with only a single loss. They were 8-1-1, 7-1-1, 6-1-2 and 6-1-2!! Over in the SEC, Vanderbilt’s conference record was 2-1-3.

DIGRESSION:

That’s nothing compared to the 1932 Chicago Bears in the NFL – they finished the regular season 6-1-6 after starting the year with three consecutive scoreless ties. (And they lost their fourth game 2-0 on a safety. Exciting offense! After four games they had not scored, yet they finished as the league champions.)

Here’s how screwy the NFL was in 1932, with all the ties: the Packers won ten games, but got to watch from the sidelines as a special championship playoff game featured two teams with six wins apiece! The aforementioned Bears won that special playoff, and the Portsmouth Spartans’ loss dropped them officially into third behind the Packers. Therefore, the Packers, who did not make the championship game, finished ahead of the poor Spartans, who did make it.

During the regular season, those three teams could not have been more even. Portsmouth split 1-1 against the Packers, and 0-0-2 against the Bears, while the Bears and Packers played three times, finishing 1-1-1.

One thought on “15-0. LSU is the new national champion

  1. Meet Joe Burrow, the new Bungles QB. Maybe his incredible talent will make them the Bengals again. I wish they’d hire LSU’s coach too, just for his voice alone.

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