Into a New Century of LSU Football [Hardcover]

Magnificent, maddening, thrilling, heartbreaking--over the years, LSU football has been called many things; boring is not among them. But no period in the team's history exemplifies the extreme highs and lows of sport better than the past fifteen years. In 1993, the Tigers were in the midst of a record six-season losing streak and the program was struggling to dig its way out of its darkest days. By 2008, LSU had emerged as one of the premier college football powers in the nation and the unprecedented two-time winner of the BCS national championship. In The Fighting Tigers, 1993-2008, award-winning sportswriter Scott Rabalais chronicles the Tigers' fantastic rise to the top of the college football universe, vividly detailing the victories and defeats, the coaches and the players, the tears and the titles of this sometimes frustrating, always fascinating period of LSU football.

Game by game, Rabalais recounts the tenures of the four head coaches who led the Tigers during these years-- Curley Hallman, the strict taskmaster whose mounting losses created dissension and apathy among the Tiger faithful; Gerry DiNardo, the charismatic salesman whose efforts to Bring Back the Magic temporarily vaulted the Tigers again into the national polls; Nick Saban, the intense workhorse who steadily rebuilt the program and led the team to its first national championship in almost fifty years; and Les Miles, the engaging wildcard who finally emerged from Saban's shadow with a championship of his own. Rabalais provides expert analysis of the 2004 and 2008 BCS national championship games and other postseason bowl games as well as the ordinary games that have crossed over into legendary status--1993's Pigs Will Fly victory against Alabama, The Night the Barn Burned at Auburn in 1996, and 2002's Bluegrass Miracle. Along the way, Rabalais recounts the incredible athletic feats of numerous standout players, including Eddie Kennison, Kevin Faulk, Josh Reed, Michael Clalc8