LSU gets screwed out of roses

Well, not exactly.

This packet, specially made for LSU's 2003 national championship victory in the Sugar Bowl, seems oddly off point this year.

Instead, there's plenty of vinegar over No. 4 ranked LSU's pairing with No. 11 Notre Dame in the Jan. 3 Sugar Bowl, the Tiger's third appearance in the New Orleans football classic since 2002.

While the BCS barely managed to pair up what seem to be the two best teams in the country at the end of this season, the system utterly failed to produce compelling matchups in its other four games.

Notre Dame gets into the elite bowl mix not because of its ranking or its performance or its finish (the Irish got clobbered by USC after managing to survive one of the softest second-half schedules in the country). The Irish are in because the school's name still sells, which is a bit of a mystery considering the team hasn't won a bowl game of any kind since 1995!

Beyond the race for the top two BCS spots, perhaps the biggest competition at the end of the season was avoiding a BCS bowl date with the overrated and undeserving Irish. LSU lost that one big time.

The Tigers deserve better. They survived a grueling schedule with road games against four top-10 teams. They competed in what proved, once again, to be the toughest conference in the country. They finished the season with huge road victories against Arkansas and Tennessee.

LSU should be playing a team of comparable caliber in a bowl.

Instead, USC finishes the season with a loss to unranked UCLA, barely wins three other games against unranked teams, and gets rewarded with a Rose Bowl slot that otherwise belonged to LSU. The weekend turmoil left more than 43,000 Tiger fans, who had pre-bought Rose Bowl tickets, sulking over what might have been.

And what about Wisconsin and Auburn? I'd much rather see those teams in a BCS game instead of Boise State or Wake Forest, or even Louisville for that matter.

All of this leaves me wondering when perennial college football brats Notre Dame and USC are going to take their turns at getting screwed?

GEAUX Tigers! GEAUX Gators! And GEAUX Big Blue!