Yes, today should have been a post continuing the Critical Reading series, but there’s another drama that has unfolded recently that is close to my heart.

It’s a story for the ages—a story of starting on top, falling, climbing back to the top, falling again, then with one final surge, gaining what everyone thought was out of reach.

Yes, I’m talking about LSU’s bid to the National Championship game January 7, 2008!

This has been the best—and worst—college football season ever.

Best because of its unpredictability—never before have so many top-ranked teams fallen to underdogs. Best because of those underdogs coming in and showing the top-dogs their positions aren’t guaranteed any longer (such as Central Florida and Appalacian State). Best because of the drama that unfolded just this weekend—LSU needed three things to happen to leapfrog from the Sugar Bowl to the National Championship game . . . and only one was in LSU’s control.

But even with as thrilled as I am that ‘my boys’ are going to the Big Dance, this could be considered the worst football season ever because of the controversy that surrounds the entire system of rankings and determining a national champion. It’s the worst season because rather than talking about how well teams have done, the commentators and sportscasters/writers have focused on the negatives of the system; they’ve spent more time speculating who’s in and who’s out and why this team should be ranked over that team and who “deserves” to go to the championship and who’s the “best” team, that the joy of watching one’s team win is tarnished. It’s also been the worst season because of what the media did to Les Miles and the LSU team with all the speculation of whether or not Les would be at LSU next year—including ESPN publicizing a report the morning of the SEC Championship game that he would definitely be leaving to take the coaching job at Michigan . . . again, taking the focus away from what’s most important: the game. The speculation and what-ifs and controversy have stolen from the players the enjoyment and accolades they should be receiving.

I am all for changing to playoffs—setting up an NFL-type playoff system with the conference champions going head-to-head until only two teams are still standing. It still won’t be perfect, but it’ll be better than it is now, when even the BCS doesn’t obey their own guidelines. (Prime example: The 1st place team in the SEC is supposed to have an automatic bid to the Sugar Bowl unless that team goes to the national championship, in which case the bid goes to the #2 team. Well, Tennessee is officially the #2 team in the SEC, having gone to, but lost, the SEC Championship game because they beat Georgia earlier in the year. But Georgia is the team going to the Sugar Bowl.)

College football will never have a perfect system to determine a national champ. There are too many teams, too many variables.

But for my LSU Tigers, no one could have scripted our season any better . . . from seemingly impossible, last-second wins to dramatic triple-overtime losses (making us the only team other than Hawaii undefeated in regulation play) to the drama and anxiety of the announcement that we are in the big game—if someone had written it as a story, no one would have found it believable.

Just goes to prove once more that life is stranger than fiction.