Saturday, November 24, 2007

But it's all we've got. . . .


We'll that's enough of that. Louisiana State's national-championship pigskin pipe dream, that is.

Got through the three-overtime debacle against Ar-KANSAS with a blue fog hanging in the air, with intermittent F-bombs still in the forecast, and an easily repaired smashed remote control. And a dented coaster.

Not one of those sandstone drink coasters, because then the TV would be dead.

I guess we Louisianians take college football kind of seriously.

AT THE END of the game, a friend (and old high-school and college classmate) called from her home in Kansas City. Mrs. Favog answered the phone.


I was informed that our friend took the big loss about like I did. Badly. Much angst and cursing. What kind of bleedin' IDIOT calls a pass play for a two-point conversion when you have the defense spread and could have run it in?

Anyway, amid blazing anger and a borderline existential crisis sometimes comes a flash of absolute clarity. Keen insight. An involuntary uttering of the God's honest truth -- straight, no chaser.

"It's sad," she said, "because it's all we've got."

I guess she could have been talking about how baseball is down and basketball is a basket case. But I doubt it.

I THINK SHE MEANT what I do: In a state leading all the bad lists and at the rear of all the good ones, LSU football is -- was -- the one unqualified success story measurable in quantifiable terms: W's and L's.

We coulda been a contender. But now we're not. More unfettered Louisiana suckiness after these messages. . . .

Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . I know. Unique culture, amazing food and music. Lots of history . . . tourism . . . blah blah blah. Unfortunately, none of that quantifiably adds to the bottom line in some very important ways.

Good food, good music and an interesting culture will not stop Louisianians from killing one another at far above the national average. They will not teach Tee John to read, or cause Bubba to graduate from a reasonably rigorous high school . . . or graduate from any high school at all.

They will not increase the state's percentage of college graduates, nor will they magically produce a well-trained, competent workforce. They thus far have resulted neither in good roads nor honest, effective government.

They have not grown the state's economy in any way that creates lots of jobs capable of supporting lots of families adequately. They have not caused a groundswell of economic activity, domestic tranquility or kept Louisiana's "best and brightest" from heading for the exits in increasing numbers every year.

Quaint, rustic and under indictment is no way to go through life.

I DON'T KNOW whether I count as "best and brightest," but I made for the exit -- for the last time -- in 1988. My friend left just before I did.

No, the one quantifiable success we native Louisianians have been able to take pride in -- at least the past seven years -- has been LSU football. We had a chance to win it all -- again. And that disappeared into an Arkansas defender's hands, in the back of the end zone, in the third overtime period.

Yes, I know football is "bread and circuses." At least the "circuses" part, anyway. And I know there are much more important things in life than that.

But it's all we've got.

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