This is a brief piece in response to Jackson’s comment that the national championship games were clearly and obviously more important than any regular season game. First, I will only discuss the relationship between the 2003 national championship game and the 2003 Georgia football game. This is because in my opinion no logical argument can be made regarding the 2007 national championship game being more important than the 2003 UGA game. By 2007, LSU was a national powerhouse who regularly had a top 5 recruiting class and sold out tiger stadium for all of its games. It had advanced to the SEC title game in 2001, 2003, and 2005 and won two of those games. While the 2007 game may have helped solidify a spot in rarified air for LSU on the national scene, it did not greatly change the current perception of LSU and was not the cornerstone of a truly great season, as only the 2007 Florida game could purport to be the cornerstone of that magical season.

Second, I think we should notice the criteria Josh used for his piece: games having a lasting impact on changing the national perception of LSU football or acting as a cornerstone to a national championship season. With this criterion in place, his placement of LSU-UGA ’03 as the number one game is not only completely defense-able, but also the clear cut best choice. Entering the ’03 season LSU was viewed as a team that had one really good hot streak to end the season in 2001 and then a team which showed some promise in 2002 before being hurt by injuries to the quarterback position. The national voters weren’t really sure what to do with LSU, and we certainly were not getting any help in the national rankings purely for being LSU, as we often times do today. Georgia was coming off a superb 2002 campaign in which they won the SEC in dominating fashion and then soundly defeated Florida State to win the Sugar Bowl. LSU was ranked 10th going into the game and UGA was ranked 6th, but walking to the stadium I can still remember many tiger fans wondering if we could really keep it close with UGA. That game though answered all the questions not only tiger fans had about their team, but also the national media. LSU from that day forward was not just a team that got hot in a weak SEC West Division in 2001, or a team that folded in 2002 once their quarterback went down with injury, they were a national powerhouse worthy of discussion. No single game could have helped LSU’s image any more than the 2003 UGA game.

But the importance of the 2003 Georgia game is better understood though in its true context, the world of regular season college football in 2003. College football is the only major college sport where one loss can eliminate you from a chance at the national championship. Granted, we have seen many one or two loss champions in the past few years (See 2008 Florida, 2007 LSU, 2006 Florida, and 2003 LSU and USC). But what you as the reader, and ultimate judge of our arguments must remember, is that before LSU won the national championship as a 1 loss team in 2003, the past 6 national champions and every national champion in the BCS era, had been undefeated. (See 1997 Nebraska and Michigan, 1998 Tennessee, 1999 Florida State , 2000 Oklahoma, 2001 Miami, 2002 Ohio State). This meant that every game you played as a major college football team from 1997-2003 was a national championship game. If you lost, the season’s ultimate goal was over. Thus, 2003 Georgia had just as much importance on winning the national title as did the actual national title game. We as fans weren’t aware that we could lose a game later that year and still back into the national title game. All we knew after 2003 Georgia was our national title hopes were still in tact and we had the respect of an entire nation of sports writers.

While 2003 Georgia was an amazing game, I do not for one second argue that the 2003 national championship victory is somehow irrelevant. It was obviously a cornerstone for our football program and something I as a fan will never forget, but I think it falls short from the 2003 UGA game because it just didn’t change our national perception as much. First, some of the luster of the game was lost when Oklahoma was slaughtered by Kansas State only weeks earlier in the Big 12 title game. Second, we were forced to share the 2003 national title with USC so many fans and national writers did not actually think we were the best team in the nation. Third, many writers discredited our performance because of our sloppy offensive performance and the fact that we were playing a national championship game in what amounted to our home stadium. Granted, these are all truly minor setbacks in the grand scheme of things, but all of them combined mean that the game did not change our national perception as much as the Georgia game did. Was the game a cornerstone game for our history? Of course it was. But when looking at the entire set of circumstances, it just didn’t change the perception of LSU on a national stage.

Let me also explain that I would agree with Jackson’s argument if this was regular season baseball or basketball. Of course no regular season game in those sports could top a national championship game, or even a post season game when facing elimination. So my conclusion would therefore be that any game in which a team could be eliminated from the national championship game would qualify as a game changing and program changing victory, especially if it directly correlates to a national championship that year (i.e. 2003 Georgia (football); 1993 Long Beach State (Baseball)(I know nobody remembers this game, but in my opinion, this is a cornerstone baseball game for our program that gave it the swagger it carried from 1991-2000)).
And for fun, I will briefly address the last of the arguments, which is that because we got a trophy we can put on display it somehow makes the game more prestigious. When LSU plays Tulane in football we play for the Tiger Rag. Does anybody care? When LSU plays Arkansas we play for the Boot. Does anybody care? When Mississippi State plays Ole Miss they play for an egg or something. Does anybody care? But when LSU beat Georgia, everybody cared. How important do we think that trophy is now?

Granted, I understand that only the crystal trophy counts and the preceding paragraph is indeed in jest. But what isn’t a joke is this, without 2003 UGA victory, not only don’t we get the crystal trophy, but we don’t get the SEC trophy, Ole Miss would have a legitimate 2003 SEC Western Division Championship Banner, and USC is your 2003 national champion. That’s a world I’m happy I don’t live in.

–Jack