Not all Bama fans thought it was a classless thing to do. I think in a bowl game, you should pull out all the stops, and the time to try trick plays is when you have a big lead. You can pratice those things all day long, but you need to see how they work in a game situation. I thought LSU played a great game, and it was one of the few bowl games that I have enjoyed so far. Why do people act like it is such a big thing to run up the score on a large Division I team. I hate it when you have to do it against a small school, but if you don't win by a lot of points against them, you can lose ranking points. The small schools are the ones that do not have the same advantage of top players like the big conference teams do, and we always want to beat them by a large margin, so why shouldn't we do the same things when playing a large school. I agree with Steve Spurier, you play for 60 minutes and you never stop trying to score, and the other team is given the same opportunity. How does it make a team look when you back off? Does this make you feel better, that the only reason they didn't beat you by more points is because they stopped trying?
Final BCS rankings (which have a big impact on 2009 pre-season rankings and associated national title implications for next season) take into account 'quality wins' in bowl games as well as the regular season. LSU had every right to maintain the huge cushion they had in points and one could argue that they would have been justified to score more than 3 points in the second half because of these factors that go into rankings. I don't think any team has an obligation to prop up any opponents. Was LSU supposed to simply take a knee on every play in the 4th quarter and keep giving their opponents an opportunity to come back? I think too many people have an extreme concept of 'sportsmanship'. When the Gators and the Dawgs both hung 50+ points on us this season, I was not mad at either of these teams: I was pissed that we did not play better in order to prevent that from happening. Are teams required at some point to not take whatever their opponents give them? I don't get the concept that having a big margin of victory somehow makes you a jerk.
Big difference between faking a punt and taking a knee. If the game is still within three touchdowns maybe I'm with ya. But Georgia Tech didn't have a prayer of winning that game. Something else was going on. We'll never know, because Miles is tight lipped.
Interesting... Dandy Don thinks Miles and Crowton threw the bombs towards the end of the game to send a message to Rueben Randle. Something like: check out the arm on our new QB!
http://www.ajc.com/sports/content/sports/gatech/stories/2009/01/01/tech_bowl_defense.html "Tech coach Paul Johnson had this reaction to the fake punt: “I can only coach one team. That stuff usually comes back to get you. I don’t worry about that, I just coach one, he coaches the other. It was a nice fake, it worked.”" he sounds ticked about it, but he's not a hothead.
I agree with those who did not like the call. But we are in a recruiting battle for some huge players, and we did need to prove to those players that LSU will be a force next year. Also keep in mind that it was against an ACC school. It's not like we play them every year. When I was watching the 4th quarter, I was thinking that we were showing off the potential we have for next year and trying to attract recruits. This fake punt thing will blow over. Les does not have a reputation of running up the score, he has a reputation of being unpredictable, and that it the reputation we want him to keep!
You know that's isn't that crazy of a train of thought. We certainly aired it out and that had to be 1) as part of the gameplan with the short passes and running game opening up the long pass and 2) to lure prospects like Debose, Randle and Kelly that we indeed have a QB that can make ALL the throws.
It's basically just college football and homerism. If it's your coach/team, you think its brilliant and you think of ways to justify it. If it's a rival, it's classless and "running up the score". It's not just one fan base...It's all of us in college football. It's up to the defense to stop it. These were 2 high profile programs it wasn't like you guys were playing Idaho. That's how I feel about.
