LSU Football: Stat that proves the 2019 LSU Tigers are the greatest college team ever
By Zach Ragan
The LSU Tigers celebrated a national championship game win against the Clemson Tigers on Monday night in New Orleans.
Before the confetti even started falling on Monday night in New Orleans, there was already a debate about whether or not the 2019 LSU Tigers were the greatest team in college football history.
After all, this is a team that cruised through the SEC Championship game and the College Football Playoffs to a national title.
There’s always the issue of recency bias, but I feel confident that the 2019 Tigers are, in fact, the best team in college football history.
And there’s a stat that proves it.
Amazing stat: LSU is the first team to beat the top four teams in the preseason AP poll (Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Oklahoma). And the Tigers did it by an average of 21 points
— The Athletic CFB (@TheAthleticCFB) January 14, 2020
This stat tells you two things:
- LSU wasn’t supposed to be in the championship game according to preseason predictions.
- The Tigers were DOMINANT
Not only did LSU beat the supposed best teams in college football this season (two of them in the playoff), they absolutely had their way with them.
The only one of those games that was close was the Tigers’ matchup against Alabama in early November.
And even that game wasn’t as close as the final score indicated (a late Crimson Tide touchdown brought Alabama to within five, with no real chance to win).
There’s no other team that comes close to that kind of dominance over the course of a season (though the 2001 Miami Hurricanes might have an argument to at least be in the conversation).
Ed Orgeron, by the way, thinks LSU has a legitimate claim to being the best college team ever, even though he wouldn’t explicitly say it.
I don’t see how in the world anyone could argue against the 2019 LSU Tigers being the top college team of all time.
We’ll likely never see this kind of team again.