There were many, many things you could say about Saturday's matchup between LSU and Georgia, and very few of them would be good.
Both teams challenged impartial observers to find anything praiseworthy about their offenses. They both alternated between incompetent and minimally competent. Even when they did something good -- see LSU's crucial TD to take a 12-7 lead -- they found some way to mess it up -- see the scrambled two-point conversion attempt that followed.
Not that the defenses did much better. When either of them was most needed to carry their respective teams to victory -- namely in the wild fourth quarter -- they instead seemed baffled to come up with some way to stop the other team. Sure interceptions were dropped or otherwise not made and running backs who made it into the secondary could at times walk into the end zone.
But what might very well have decided this game was a terrible unsportsmanlike conduct flag on A.J. Green after Georgia took a 13-12 lead. The flag was enforced on the kickoff and almost assured LSU good field position even before Trindon Holliday was done with a long return.
Sure, LSU draw a flag almost as questionable as the one on Green after the Bengals' TD to take an 18-13 lead, 20-13 after a successful two-point conversion. But at some point, one of the offenses had to run out of the ability to magically score despite its own performance, and the Dawgs came up short with -- what else? -- a turnover. Joe Cox threw an interception that ended the game.
What did we learn today? Nothing, really. Other than the age-old lessons that fans learned a long time ago but that still seems to escape the NCAA.
Games should never be won or lost because a player is excited about making a big play.