The view from Baton Rouge

Amazing how different your perspective can be depending on where you're sitting.

In these parts, LSU looks like a really impressive team. The Bayou Bengals pushed South Carolina around on both sides of the ball. They went to Texas A&M and won. They outplayed Ala-freaking-Bama.

In those parts, this has been a disappointing season because the season began with visions of a BCS title. Actually, every season over there begins with those visions.

“I would never have taken a 10-2 final [regular season record],” Les Miles said. “But as it played out, I felt like this team continued to improve and continued to get better and really wants to be a quality football team.”

From this corner, the Chick-fil-A Bowl is an attractive postseason destination. It just has that big-stage feel even though it's not a part of the BCS arrangement. Clemson fans wanted Sugar, but this is a heck of a consolation prize -- particularly when matched against that abomination that will take place in the Orange Bowl between Florida State and Northern Illinois Tech.

But when you ended last season in the BCS title game, and you spent the last week or so thinking you were headed to the Cotton, heading to Atlanta is a bit of a downer.

LSU fans are justified in feeling a little peeved. They beat A&M fair and square in College Station, and they knocked off the Gamecocks in Baton Rouge. Yet those two foes were slotted into bowls higher up the pecking order.

Here's a column from Baton Rouge that sums up the feelings of LSU backers.

The Cotton wanted LSU, but not as much as it wanted Texas A&M. Take a step back, Tigers, but we’ll be glad to say “Howdy!” in August when you come to play TCU in the Cowboys Classic.

The Outback Bowl, we’re told, wanted LSU. And it had Michigan on the other side, with the potential for a first-ever meeting between the Tigers and Wolverines. The Capital One may have even wanted the Tigers, but the SEC wanted to protect SEC Championship Game loser Georgia.

So instead of Georgia making a second straight trip to the Outback Bowl or falling to the Chick-fil-A Bowl, the Cap One protected Georgia, which came up 5 yards short of the BCS title game Saturday against Alabama.

But who protects LSU? The Tigers were the SEC’s fourth-highest-ranked team according to the final BCS standings, behind Alabama, Florida and Georgia. Alabama is in the BCS title game. Florida is in the Sugar Bowl. Georgia is in the Cap One. All fair enough.

But LSU deserved the SEC’s fourth-best pick. That’s the Cotton or the Outback. They’re on the same line of the SEC bowl hierarchy. But instead, the teams in those bowls, Texas A&M and South Carolina, are the teams that LSU beat. They are teams that LSU is still ranked ahead of (A&M is No. 9, South Carolina No. 10).

And, lookie here: The ACC isn't the only place where notions of conspiracy theories and alleged grudges are thrown around.

Still, LSU deserved better. As long as the SEC is pulling strings and calling in markers, the Tigers deserved to have the SEC say, “Hey, Aggies, you’re the new kids here. You’re going to the Chick-fil-A. LSU has been at the adults’ table for 80 years. We’re going to take care of them first.”

Instead, LSU was the only one of the six top-10 BCS schools from the SEC that didn’t get any of what it wanted.

Really, is this unexpected? This is the same SEC that when knocking together its slip-shod 2013 football schedule stuck LSU with a road trip to Georgia on top of its permanent SEC East game against Florida. Meanwhile, Alabama kept its permanent SEC East game with Tennessee and added a road trip to Kentucky.

UK’s football program is in such bad shape the SEC should have sent the Red Cross instead. Tennessee isn’t much better. They went a combined 1-15 in SEC play this year. Georgia and Florida were 14-2. Anyone care to guess who will be favored to win the SEC West?

While you chew on that, LSU will prepare for a bowl trip unlikely to generate a buzz among the Tigers’ typically passionate fans.

It’s not the Chick-fil-A Bowl itself that’s a turnoff.

It’s the lack of respect for LSU from the SEC and the bowl process.

No respect at all.

LW