GEAUX TIGERS!!!

The National Championship game on January 9, 2012, traumatized me. I thought the 10's were going to be my decade.
Everything seemed to be in place in 2011. Decent job. Healthy wife and young son. Living in a house we liked in an area of the city we liked. My wife and I hopeful and trying for a second child. A piece of my writing finally seeming to be on the verge of giving me some recognition. And my team, my alma mater that I and so many other Louisianans bleed purple and gold for looking at capping what could possibly be the best season in LSU football history. Only one thing stood in the way:
The past.
Our old coach, Nick Saban, who had rebuilt our once proud, but crumbling program back from the brink in the early 00's, had eventually left us for one of our most hated rivals, Alabama. Somehow, though, his successor at LSU, Les Miles, had been holding his own against him. In fact, at the time, Miles was the only coach to have a winning record against Saban. We'd already beat Nick Saban's Alabama in the 2011 regular season, but the NCAA announced that Alabama would receive a do-over in the season ending National Championship Game on January 9, 2012. Leading up to that, several things happened to my personal life in rapid succession.
The piece of writing that I thought was going to bring me national attention was disregarded for someone else's piece. I felt so hurt, I stopped writing fiction altogether...and I'd been writing fiction my entire life. My wife and I...well, a second child never came, and we eventually discovered that it was, essentially, a medical impossibility. Turns out, even our first, and still only child, is a miracle. Then, my place of work started downsizing, and cutting hours. My salary went down, and we lost the ability to pay rent for the house we lived in in Baton Rouge. We'd have to move out to the country, back to my home parish, down in a trailer in a field, across the street from my parents' house. Eventually, the company I worked for went out of business, and I decided to go back to school. At one point as a student, I found myself also working four different jobs simultaneously, and even had to drop out for awhile because my wife's job unexpectedly ended. There was a three month period where I picked pecans to make enough money to pay our trailer mortgage. We went on food stamps. I couldn't provide for my own family. I completely and utterly failed.
So did the LSU Tigers.
On January 9, 2012, Les Miles' LSU Tigers lost to Nick Saban's Alabama Crimson Tide, 21-0, in the National Championship game. As the LSU coach, Les Miles would stay home and watch other teams, including multiple Nick Saban-coached Alabama teams, go to and win the National Championship game, until Miles was fired in 2016. Miles' replacement: a man who understands failure.
As the head coach of Ole Miss from 2005-2007, Ed Orgeron's total record was 10-25. He was fired and then ridiculed, considered a joke, mocked for his thick Cajun accent and energetic demeanor. Orgeron eventually found himself as an assistant at USC, and experienced his own shot of false hope. After USC's coach was fired early in the 2013 season, Orgeron became interim head coach, and went 6-2. Players and fans loved him, and he seemed a shoe in to become the permanent head coach, but the USC administration didn't like his accent or outsider status, and didn't hire him on as head coach at the end of the year. Orgeron later said the only personal news he's received in his life that's devastated him worse was the death of his father, which makes sense, as he often says he considers his players as his own sons.
Miles hired Orgeron as an assistant in 2015, and lo and behold, in 2016, when Miles was fired, Orgeron got the interim tag again, and went 6-2 again. At the end of the year, this time, despite seemingly not being the administration's first, second, or even third choice, Orgeron got the head coaching position at LSU. He cried at his announcement speech, and promised to do his best to bring a championship to his beloved home state of Louisiana. The vast majority of our previous coaches, from Nick Saban to Les Miles, have not been native sons. Orgeron grew up with a bayou even closer to his house than I did.
The latter half of the decade saw some personal momentum for my family. After some rough patches, my wife and I went to several years of very helpful marriage counseling, and I've been in solo counseling myself. Speaking of counseling, my wife got her Masters in Mental Health Counseling, and has been working in that capacity for the last couple of years. As for me, I finally found employment in the most obvious of places...
LSU. I've been able to put my insane cornucopia of job experiences and my...200 hours of undergrad classes? to use as a business manager there, and after several years in that capacity, I might just be finding my way professionally. I've even started writing again. I'm doing a podcast I love. I'm running a marathon in less than a week. My son just won the spelling bee and likes school...
AND LSU JUST STARTED OFF THE 2020's BY WINNING THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP. Ed Orgeron, with a team full of players having stories similar to his, led a restorative 2019 football season that saw LSU finally throw the Alabama monkey off its back, breaking an eight game losing streak that began on 1/9/12. LSU completed a perfect season with a 42-25 demolishing of defending national champion, Clemson, who was seeming to have the decade LSU thought they would have. 1/13/20 will be a night I won't soon forget. What a satisfying game and start to a new decade. I've got a feeling the bright ending to the last one promises the 20's will be a personal decade for the ages, whether LSU wins nine more championships or none!
GEAUX TIGERS!!!