Fiesta Bowl: LSU Says WTF to UCF's 25-Game Winning Streak

The only way this clash was gonna prove anything to any available open-minded college football fan was if one of the teams laid a full-service smackdown on the other.

UCF's Golden Knights were opportunistic while LSU's Bayou Bengals were relentless.

Over the course of 60 playing minutes, relentless is gonna win more often than not.

 

Now that we're in an era where, after crashing and banging their way through an entire fall season, bowl games somehow carry a higher risk of McGahee syndrome, a team's body of work carries little relevance in the game that's supposedly its reward for a worthy campaign.

It provided an interesting counundrum in the Fiesta Bowl.

What's more devastating:

• Losing your starting QB, who's been nothing less than phenomenal over the past two seasons; or
• Losing damn near your entire defense, which posted yet another season of stalwart stoppage?

Even though UCF's redshirt freshman slinger Darriel Mack Jr put on a show in the AAC title game, LSU's program is deep and much further along in their development than he is.

That was the essential factor in the Tigers' 40-32 victory that proved nothing more than the CFP bracket's gotta grow:

 

Filling in a few blanks here ...

Seems like Joey Connors' block that blew up LSU chucker Joe Burrow on the interception return didn't make the PG-13 criteria during the pick-six:

 

Furious or no, that was a classic clean hit.

Ed Orgeron shoulda thought of it as a football ballet of brute force.

Apparently, Terrence Alexander's right jab wasn't PG-13, either:

 

Dude, that was a jab.

Alexander showed no sign of a three-year educational experience at Stanford. Maybe that's why he transferred. Still, even at LSU, players are expected to be smarter than punching hard plastic face masks.

He obviously didn't learn anything from the Hanson Brothers, either.

 

Being real, even though LSU's athletic budget is three times that of UCF, the Golden Knights showed for the second year in a row that they can compete with an elite program.

Now it's time for them to bite the pride bullet and do their fellow Other Fives a solid.

Accept the Florida Gators' offer of a 2-for-1 scheduling deal.

 

Kanell, incidentally, played for Florida State. Getting digs in against a rival never goes outta style.

Then again, neither does Power Five snobbery.

 

Having now seen the Knights up close, Orgeron gave them props.

Time for the rest of the big brands to do the same.