You Can’t Measure the Size of One’s Heart

by Sam King

At the outset of the season, I felt LSU would “win one it should lose and lose one it should win.”

Never did I, or many other people, see a season in which it could have won every game thus far — or could have lost five with the clock still ticking.

With a few “ifs” you can figure how they should have won ’em all — or, a few more “ifs” and you can show how they would have lost all five.

Two games have been lost in triple overtime and three other cliff-hangers were decided almost at the buzzer with come-from-behind performances. There were other games with not-so-close endings that were far from a cinch victory.

I am not the least bit surprised LSU has lost two games, but more so surprised how the Tigers won the three they did.

They yanked victory from the jowls of defeat so many times it has become rather commonplace. Turning in spectacular, big plays became somewhat expected — in too many games in which the Tigers failed to take care of business ahead of time.

They stumbled, bumbled at first — and then battled until they could make the big play at just the right time.

You can go to that well too often. You had to figure LSU was in trouble in this one from the outset when it led by only two field goals despite dame fortune smiling on it early. Despite everything that had gone wrong for Arkansas, the Razorbacks were only down 6-0, little or no obstacle for Heisman Trophy candidate Darren McFadden to overcome.

LSU’s amazing comeback ability, it’s defying-the-odds success on fourth downs, fakes and game-winning plays became routine. The Tigers stayed on a roll to the bitter end Friday.

That contributed to a lot of the dismay for LSU fans following Matt Flynn’s two-point pass that was intercepted in the Tigers’ triple-overtime loss to Arkansas by a 50-48 score.

Unfortunately, every screaming, and later stunned, fan there Friday night knew the feeling in Mudville when Mighty Casey finally struck out. It turned into Black Friday in a place other than the shopping mall.

Considering what has happened in college football this season, if LSU wins out, which, at this point and time, seems very questionable, it will, by far, have surpassed my expectations.

Unlike almost everyone in south Louisiana, I wasn’t convinced LSU should have been ranked as high as it was coming into the season. It didn’t have the spectacular, highly skilled offensive players you find on the great teams. It had to begin play with a quarterback with limited experience. You didn’t have a running back in the hunt for the Heisman Trophy. There was one good receiver, but not your lead-pipe cinch great one.

Sure, there were a lot of veterans returning, including All-American Glenn Dorsey, to make the defense special.

It had no Darren McFadden or Tim Tebow in this game where pitch, catch and run are three great requirements.

You could measure this or compare that, but as former basketball coach Dale Brown often pointed out, “you can’t measure the size of one’s heart.”

That’s where so many players like Flynn, Jacob Hester, Dorsey and so many others excel. That’s the only reason LSU kept pulling victories out at the end.

That’s the reason that while Dorsey, Flynn, Hester and the rest of the Tigers are in Saturday’s Southeastern Conference championship game, McFadden and Tebow will only be watching. They’ll likely be recounting what could have, would have and should have happened in their teams’ close losses in the season.

Just as you can find ways you could have, would have and should have won close games, the same can be said about those episodes you won.

Now, they are all history.

What’s important to this team that has won so many games and made this season so spectacular is to win the next game, another SEC title, and win a bowl game, wherever, whenever.

It would be a very unfitting end to a great season to lose the last three games — and it can happen if LSU rebounds with all the resiliency it has shown in the last quarter of so many games this season.

The season is winding down. It’s time for the hearty effort and big plays. They are the trademarks for this team.