It has been really easy to compare current-day LSU to the Auburn teams of a decade ago. Back in October, I compared the runs of two great quarterbacks, Auburn's Cam Newton in 2010 and LSU's Joe Burrow in 2019. But there's another, less enjoyable comparison to make regarding what happened after those star QBs left.
After Newton, Auburn staggered to an 8-5 season before completely collapsing in 2012. With no nonconference slate to prop it up, LSU has fast-forwarded straight to a potential collapse, starting this season 2-3, including frustrating losses to Mississippi State and Missouri and a blowout against Auburn.
LSU was scheduled to face Alabama on Saturday, before the game was postponed due to COVID-19. But the opening line for Alabama-LSU still made history. Caesars Sportsbook by William Hill listed the Crimson Tide as 28-point favorites. Going back to 1978, a defending national champion had never been a more than 21-point underdog. In fact, only one defending champ had ever been a more than 12-point underdog: Auburn in 2011, twice.
Since 1978, there have been only 11 games featuring a defending champ as an underdog of more than seven points. Nearly half of those were played by post-Cam Auburn, and not many featured programs that were due to reach the promised land again anytime soon.
Oct. 8, 1983: No. 3 Alabama at Penn State (+8)
Season to date: After winning their first national title under Joe Paterno in 1982, Penn State opened 1983 with three consecutive losses -- blowouts to No. 1 Nebraska and No. 13 Iowa, plus a baffling loss to Cincinnati. After wins at Temple and Rutgers, the Nittany Lions welcomed Ray Perkins' unbeaten Alabama to town and avenged their lone loss of 1982.
Result: Penn State 34, Alabama 28. Alabama turned the ball over six times, and Penn State freshman D.J. Dozier had his fourth straight 100-yard rushing game, going for 163. The Nittany Lions raced to a 34-7 lead, then took their foot off the gas. Alabama drove for three fourth-quarter touchdowns, then blocked what would have been the game-clinching field goal with 2:56 left. The Crimson Tide drove down the field once more, but Penn State's Greg Gattuso and Mark Fruehan stopped Kerry Goode short of the goal line as time expired.
Cover? Yes.
Aftermath: Dozier and other freshmen eventually drove the next great Penn State run. The Nittany Lions went just 14-9-1 in 1983 and '84 but 11-1 in 1985. After falling short of a title because of an Orange Bowl loss to Oklahoma, they sealed the deal the next year, going 12-0 and upsetting Miami in the Fiesta Bowl.
Sept. 28, 1991: No. 19 Georgia Tech (+9) at No. 7 Clemson
Season to date: After one of the more unexpected national title runs in modern college football history, Bobby Ross' Yellow Jackets fell back to earth, losing to Penn State in the Kickoff Classic the next year. They beat Boston College and Virginia but then headed to Death Valley to take on unbeaten Clemson.
Result: Clemson 9, Georgia Tech 7. Tech took an early lead on a Shawn Jones touchdown, and it held up until Clemson's Ronald Williams scored from 2 yards out to give the Tigers a late lead. Tech set up a 44-yard Scott Sisson field goal attempt with three seconds left. But Sisson, one of the most clutch kickers of his day -- he had already won or tied five games in the last minute in his career, and he was only a junior -- hooked it right.
Cover? Yes.
Aftermath: Ross left for the NFL after the season (which finished 8-5), and the Yellow Jackets went just 11-22 in three years under successor Bill Lewis. Georgia Tech hasn't seriously challenged for a national title -- or topped No. 7 in the AP poll -- since.
Nov. 14, 1998: No. 11 Nebraska (+11) at No. 2 Kansas State
Season to date: After winning three national titles in four years, Nebraska coach Tom Osborne retired and was replaced by longtime assistant Frank Solich. The Huskers began 1998 5-0 but then lost tight games to Texas A&M and Texas. It was time to try to spoil the greatest run in Kansas State's history.
Result: Kansas State 40, Nebraska 30. K-State played second fiddle to the Huskers for years, and the unbeaten Wildcats nearly let this opportunity slip through their fingers. Eric Crouch's 9-yard touchdown pass to Sheldon Jackson gave the Huskers the lead with 8:22 left, but K-State drove 80 yards in 10 plays, scoring on an 11-yard strike from Michael Bishop to Darnell McDonald. After one of the most grotesque missed face mask calls of all time, Jeff Kelly scooped up a Crouch fumble and took it 23 yards to ice the game with three seconds left.
Cover? Yes.
Aftermath: The Huskers remained contenders throughout Crouch's career, reaching the BCS title game in 2001. But Solich was fired in 2003 after producing merely a series of top-10 finishes instead of national titles. Nebraska hasn't finished in the top 10 since.
Nov. 21, 1998: No. 11 Michigan (+10) at No. 7 Ohio State
Season to date: The week after Nebraska's foray as an underdog, 1997's other co-champion, Michigan, faced a big rivalry game of its own. The Wolverines began the season with back-to-back losses to ranked Notre Dame and Syracuse teams but rallied to win eight in a row and had just beaten top-10 Penn State and Wisconsin teams by a combined 54-10. That they were still double-digit underdogs to Ohio State speaks to how good the Buckeyes were. John Cooper's squad was an absolute juggernaut but had been upset by Nick Saban's Michigan State two weeks earlier, a loss that would keep them out of the BCS Championship.
Result: Ohio State 31, Michigan 16. Michael Wiley rushed 10 times for 120 yards, David Boston caught 10 passes for 217 yards, and after falling behind 21-3 in the second quarter, Tom Brady and the Wolverines couldn't get closer than 11 points the rest of the way.
Cover? No.
Aftermath: The Wolverines rallied to finish 10-3 and No. 12 in the AP poll, and they finished in the top 15 six more times before Lloyd Carr retired in 2007, including fifth in 1999, sixth in 2003 and eighth in 2006. They haven't finished higher than 10th since.
Oct. 6, 2007: No. 9 Florida (+7.5) at No. 1 LSU
Season to date: The Gators began their defense of the 2006 title with rollicking wins over Western Kentucky, Troy and Tennessee by a combined 167-54. But they nearly slipped up at Ole Miss, and they lost 20-17 at home to Auburn. Les Miles' LSU was playing as the AP's No. 1 team for the first time in 48 years and had shown no signs of vulnerability.
Result: LSU 28, Florida 24. An angry Florida charged to a 17-7 halftime lead and maintained a 10-point advantage heading into the fourth quarter, thanks to a 37-yard Tim Tebow-to-Cornelius Ingram strike. But the Gators were facing Miles at his Riverboat Gambler peak. The Tigers scored on fourth down in the second quarter and set up a third-quarter touchdown with a fake field goal. Down 24-21 in the final few minutes, they converted two more 4th-and-shorts before Jacob Hester scored the winning points with 1:09 left.
Cover? Yes.
Aftermath: The Gators won a tight one over Kentucky the next week, then fell to an inspired Georgia in Jacksonville. That was about it for Tebow losses. Florida won 27 of its next 28 regular-season games, winning the SEC and national titles in 2008 and nearly doing the same in 2009. The Gators haven't finished in the top five, however, since Tebow's eligibility ran out.
Oct. 1, 2011: Auburn (+10.5) at No. 10 South Carolina
Oct. 8, 2011: No. 15 Auburn (+10) at No. 10 Arkansas
Oct. 22, 2011: No. 19 Auburn (+21) at No. 1 LSU
Nov. 12, 2011: No. 24 Auburn (+12) at No. 14 Georgia
Nov. 26, 2011: No. 2 Alabama at Auburn (+21)
Season to date: After the team lost Newton, it was all but assumed that Auburn's stock was going to fall quite a bit. The Tigers were ranked No. 23 in the preseason poll, and that turned out to be a bit of an overestimation. Auburn barely beat Utah State in Week 1 before quarterback Barrett Trotter's shining moment, a 41-34 win over No. 16 Mississippi State. The winning streak officially ended the next week, however, with a 38-24 loss at Clemson, and life as a heavy underdog officially began in October.
Results: Auburn 16, South Carolina 13; Arkansas 38, Auburn 14; LSU 45, Auburn 10; Georgia 45, Auburn 7; Alabama 42, Auburn 14
The Tigers' last stand came in Columbia, South Carolina. In a scruffy game that featured more turnovers (eight) than scores (five), Trotter found Philip Lutzenkirchen for a 9-yard touchdown with 1:38 left to pull a 16-13 upset over the Gamecocks.
The four remaining ranked opponents on Auburn's schedule -- including not only the best Arkansas team of the 2010s but also the eventual SEC East champ (Georgia) and both BCS Championship participants (LSU and Alabama) -- beat the Tigers by an average of 43-11.
Cover? Only against South Carolina.
Aftermath: The Tigers rallied to beat Virginia in the Chick-fil-A Bowl, but with two new coordinators and even more on-field turnover, they went just 3-9 the following season. Less than two years after winning the national title, Gene Chizik was fired. Under Gus Malzahn, Chizik's offensive coordinator through 2011 and eventual successor, Auburn remained strong, reaching the BCS Championship in 2013 and nearly reaching the CFP in 2017. But since going 14-0 in 2010, the Tigers have reached double-digit wins just twice.
Jan. 1, 2015: No. 2 Florida State (+9) vs. No. 3 Oregon
Season to date: After romping to the 2013 national title, Florida State played most of 2014 in what seemed like a hungover state. Despite returning most of their key 2013 contributors, including Heisman-winning quarterback Jameis Winston, the Seminoles eked out seven one-score wins. They finished the regular season unbeaten and won the ACC but didn't get the top seed in the inaugural College Football Playoff. This run was not going to end well, right? Right.
Result: Oregon 59, Florida State 20. The champs hung tough for two-and-a-half quarters, trailing just 25-20 midway through the third. But things quickly fell apart. Oregon scored five times in 12 minutes; two Marcus Mariota touchdown passes, a Mariota run and a famous Winston fumble (returned 58 yards by Tony Washington) turned a tight game into a 39-point rout.
Cover? No.
Aftermath: This was the beginning of a long, slow demise. Florida State fell to 10 wins in each of the next two seasons. Then Jimbo Fisher left after a 7-6 campaign in 2017. The Seminoles have gone just 13-19 since, they've made more head-coaching changes in three seasons (two) than they did the previous 50 years (one), and they're looking at a third straight losing season.
***
Lines are status symbols. Most of the time, a team that wins a national title remains a contender the next year. But when that fails to happen -- when a wobbly champ faces a highly ranked team that oddsmakers believe is a significant favorite -- it's not only a sign that your time has passed. It's also a sign that your time might not come again for a while.
Unless you've got Tim Tebow, anyway.