Checking my calendar, I noticed that it has now been over three weeks since our football team’s flawless BCS National Championship Game victory in the Super Dome. During this time span, players have declared their intent to enter the NFL draft, the day has been set for this spring’s A-Day game, and the Tide has secured another top recruiting class on National Signing Day. The celebrations, other than the internal joy felt every time you think of the game’s final score, are over, and talk has turned mostly to what next season will hold for our team.
However, in Louisiana, their calendars are still stuck on Jan. 9. The heartache Tiger fans felt in New Orleans that night, looking up at the scoreboard as they left the stadium in the middle of the third quarter, is still there. They’re frustrated, disappointed, sad, angry and still passed out at Krystal.
Thankfully for them, they have quality journalism and sharp minds to express these feelings. To put Baton Rouge’s current mindset into words, the Louisiana State University student newspaper, The Daily Reveille, printed an article on Monday titled, “Clues you are an Alabama fan.”
Judging by this article, the best way to describe the mood in Baton Rouge would be sour, to say the least. So sour, in fact, they have resorted to poor attempts at mudslinging in the direction of the team who beat them 21-0 just over three weeks ago.
It seems that some members of the LSU student body have let their emotions stunt their ability to complete quality classwork. This article, written by students in a mass communication writing class, is a list of cringe-worthy one-liners against our fan base that even members of the Auburn “family” probably wouldn’t find funny. Don’t get me wrong, I love the antics that go on between rival schools, but is this really the best you can come up with, LSU?
I can understand the student body’s current state of mind, though. I think I can speak for every Bama fan in saying that the same words I used to describe the feelings of LSU fans are the exact ones I felt the night of Nov. 5. We were heartbroken.
The difference, though, between our loss on Nov. 5 and LSU’s loss on Jan. 9 lies in the post-game reaction. After our loss, we immediately began to look ahead to the rest of the season, understanding that both SEC and BCS championship hopes were slowly slipping away. Our team and our fans swallowed our pride, picked up the pieces and hoped for the best. While it was frustrating how close the game was, and how many opportunities we had to win, we still understood that we had been beaten. We as fans had been properly humbled, and Nick Saban and his team were given the motivation to end the season as they did.
LSU’s student body obviously believes in a different approach to losing. Instead of looking forward to next fall and vowing revenge on the gridiron, they’ve decided to take the low road and make themselves look like a middle school student slinging “yo momma” jokes on the playground.
This isn’t the first time their student body has openly spoken against our school and its football team either. If you remember, this newspaper quoted the LSU student body president, comparing our team’s chance for a rematch in a title game to our students being able to retake final exams. I think he might have already had an idea of what was in store for his team in the weeks to follow.
When it comes down to it, it’s a matter of respect and class. While our fan base isn’t free from their share of highly publicized incidents of disrespecting teams after both wins and losses, I can say that our students have handled our program’s successes and disappointments while abstaining from taking the low road. It seems our rivals in Louisiana could not only take some pointers from Saban’s playbook, but also from the way our student body reflects the pride we have in our school and the respect we have for our opponents, no matter the result.
So, LSU, I’ll add respect and class to my own list: Clues to why we’re better than you.
Brad Tipper is a sophomore majoring in political science and economics.
