Bowl season provides us with many things. One of them is narratives that stick with teams through the whole offseason. Many of these are overreactions, while some turn out to be true.
Bowl games are always the most recent data point we have and people often tend to believe what happened most recently is most likely to happen again.
In LSU’s case, it might be especially dubious to read into what happens on Tuesday night. The Tiger roster that takes the field against Kansas State will be much different than the one we see next year. Furthermore, the coaching staff won’t look remotely the same either.
From a team standpoint, I think it’ll be impossible to take anything away from this bowl game. Which, I know, is frustrating. If you’re team isn’t in a meaningful bowl, sometimes the fun lies in what they give you to look forward to in the next season. The good news is that’s still doable from a individual player standpoint.
Remember 2014? It was a lost season for LSU. They came in with expectations, but for the first time in a few years, did not win 10 games. They were sent to Nashville to face Notre Dame in the Music City Bowl.
LSU lost that game but I still remember it today. Leonard Fournette had his breakout game leading fans to be excited for what they might see from Fournette and LSU in 2015. Fournette went on to have one of the greatest individual seasons LSU fans had ever seen.
At that time, Fournette was an obvious breakout candidate. LSU was waiting for him to have that game after coming in as the top-ranked recruit in college football. There’s not a clear player to watch for that on LSU now, but they do have some young guys capable of announcing themselves.