Richt is a superior coaching mind who makes the most of his resources with well-designed gameplans, motivational tactics and by all accounts, is a genuinely decent human being in a profession that almost demands asshole bravado and OCD personality usually found in top-level chefs and cavalry officers. So, coming off a series of seasons ending up inches short of real glory, Richt has taken a comparatively weak talent pool and made them into a surprisingly competent force by putting what resources he has in the optimal position to produce. So it came to pass that Joe Cox lobbed a jump ball to AJ Green on what should have been the finishing touch on a masterfully planned and executed strategy against an athletically superior, highly ranked opponent. Then, a more than questionable celebration penalty gives LSU field position to set them up for an abbreviated comeback march.
Despite past talented teams built after taking over a proud program in a rut and said good nature and diligent planning, Richt has not managed to get over the hump for a national championship. Whereas Les Miles, the brash doofus with the high hat, falls balls first into a ready-made program at its peak and, despite calling plays like a whiskey-drunk frat boy playing a South Koren pre-teen on Xbox Live at 3 in the morning, manages a national championship in a season where he didn’t even win his own division.
The Hatchet Option
Mark Richt: I know you. You're the guy from the gym.
Les Miles: I'm not here representing HardBodies.
Mark Richt: Oh, yes. I know very well what you represent.
[pause]
Mark Richt: You represent the idiocy of today.
Les Miles: No, I don't represent that either.
Mark Richt: Oh, yes. You see, you're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life. My whole fucking life. But guess what... Today, I win.
No one could blame Richt, and in the Les Miles death pool, the odds of “Maniacal Hatchet Attack” are probably better than anybody since Custer. More likely, though, he’d opt for the defeatist sit down and search for meaning.
The Search For Meaning Option
Richt: What did we learn, Mike?
Bobo: I don't know, sir.
Richt: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
Bobo: Yes, sir.
Richt: I'm fucked if I know what we did.
Bobo: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say
Richt: Jesus Fucking Christ.
Les Miles has a lucky horseshoe implanted in his colon. There’s really no other explanation for it. LSU fans are enjoying it, as well they should. It’s the college football fandom equivalent of having a drunken, dancing bear in your living room tethered to a coffee table with a piece of twine.
Eventually, Miles is going to pass that horseshoe in a scene so horrific that it will turn Skip Bertman Catholic. Because afterward, he will have no choice but to admit that Satan is very real.
Speaking of Catholic, the Washington Huskies WR targeted on the last play of the game was the victim of one of the sickest hits on a football field not to end in a compound fracture and a Lawrence Taylor cocaine-fueled war cry. Jake Locker envies him, because Locker will actually remember watching Jimmy Clausen doing a celebratory song in a gentle sway while a man slips into a Days Of Our Lives coma on the 2-yard line.
Tennessee fans are now learning the lesson the CIA Officer at the end of Burn After Reading didn’t grasp—the wide-eyed delusional generally ends up getting capped between the eyes in a closet. This may well be the fate of the Lane Kiffin era.
As Basil recounts, the Razorbacks took care of Texas A&M in the Jerry Dome in satisfactory fashion. However, the Big 12 is home to a collection of impotent formerly-proud powers not seen outside of the Mediterranean, and I don’t think it gets talked about nearly enough. It’s an elephant graveyard and Oklahoma and Texas get credit for kicking around bones in the dust.
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