LSU plays Florida at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Oct. 9, 2010. Despite being among the worst teams in the country for committing penalties, LSU (2007) and Florida (2006, 2008) won national championships. Other champions have been among the most penalty-prone teams in the country (Arkorn / Shutterstock.com).

The one where I forget I don’t cover LSU and college football anymore …

Published September 30, 2015

So, by my rough calculations (and I’m not a scientist), with zero penalties this season, the LSU football team would be 7-0 right now, Leonard Fournette would have 1,593 rushing yards and 23 touchdowns, and the Very Important Committee that decides the four teams that will compete for the national championship would have to find something else to do this fall. The trophy would be awarded by acclamation. At least that’s what I heard someone with a thick Cajun accent say inside my head this morning as I sipped Community Coffee and remembered the anything-is-still-possible optimism of September in college football.

But OK, maybe there’s some exaggeration in that conclusion. Reigning champion Ohio State is No. 1, one of four teams in the top five of the AP Top 25 from a Big conference. The one that isn’t, “Mississippi” (as it’s known here in the Pacific Northwest), was recently called the nation’s best team in a piece by Business Insider. In the Midwest, people are waking up echoes talking about Notre Dame. Also in the top 10 is Georgia; is it too much to ask for a rematch of the first national championship game I saw in person, the 1981 Sugar Bowl? Then there’s the matter of LSU’s defense, which does not feature a Leonard Fournette.

Conventional wisdom says LSU needs to cut down on its penalties. The Tigers had 14 against Syracuse in a 34-24 victory Saturday, and through four weeks of the regular season, they are one of the worst offenders in the country in littering green fields with yellow flags. Coach Les Miles and his players said a penalty-free game is the goal after that performance. But being penalty-prone does not commit a college football team to a dystopian world in which championships are mere rumor, like maybe clean drinking water or safe city streets.

Now, don’t misunderstand: I’m not telling you LSU can win the national championship (I’m also not telling you it can’t). But after hearing and reading about how much better the Tigers would be with fewer penalties, I remembered something I discovered as an LSU beat writer preparing for the second BCS national championship game I covered (in the same venue where I watched Herschel Walker and Georgia soar over Notre Dame). Research the day before LSU’s 38-24 victory against Ohio State for the BCS title on Jan. 7, 2008, revealed an often-overlooked truth: You can have a lot of penalties and win a national championship.

Let’s put aside the anomaly that is Alabama coached by Nick Saban. We’ll get to that later. LSU was 117th in the country in the 2007 season in fewest penalties per game at 8.36, an average of more than four flags per game worse than national-best Army (4.00). That’s 117th out of 119 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision, so only two teams (South Florida and Cincinnati) were penalized more. In fewest penalty yards per game, LSU was 97th.

The year before, Florida won the national championship despite being 118th in penalties, 109th in penalty yards — also nearly the worst in the country. When the 2008 Florida team followed LSU’s national title with another, the Gators were 105th in penalties, 95th in penalty yards. The 2001 Miami team was 112th in the former, 114th in the latter and won the national championship. Last year’s Ohio State team was 50th in penalties. The Florida State team it succeeded as national champion was 68th. So what gives? As a friend of mine said, it seems counterintuitive.

More scrutiny

Before that Ohio State-LSU game in January 2008, I talked with Gary Danielson, the former NFL quarterback who joined CBS Sports as color analyst for college football broadcasts in 2006. He said that game officials probably wouldn’t admit it, but that it was human nature to look more closely at the dominant teams, the most successful teams, and question why they’re so dominant. Are they playing aggressively to the point of nearly crossing the line, or are they frequently crossing it? For a story I wrote for The Advocate newspaper in Baton Rouge, Danielson said he thought officials tend to notice mistakes by the better team more than they do the lesser team.

“It just catches their eye more,” Danielson said. “It’s not like it’s not a correct call. It’s just that there’s other calls that they just don’t see as well because their focus is more on the team that they feel is the better team.”

Danielson also said that when a team gets a reputation for having a lot of penalties, it’s not like officials are unaware of that going into one of that team’s games.

“Once you come into the game as a referee and prepare for a team,” he said, “and you see that they’ve been heavily penalized, you say, ‘Wait a second. They must be doing something wrong.’ I really think it is subliminal, though.”

Leonard Fournette runs against Auburn (Steve Franz, LSU Athletics Photographer).

That was then

This year’s LSU team is actually 3-0 and ranked No. 9 in the AP poll. A big reason for its success is Fournette, who has rushed for 631 yards and eight touchdowns. After running for 228 yards and three touchdowns against Auburn, he rushed for 244 yards and two scores at Syracuse. In that game, his 87-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter was erased by one of LSU’s 14 penalties. A breakdown of his performance is here at Syracuse.com.

LSU has won all three games despite being 117th in the nation in fewest penalties per game (9.33), tied for 120th in fewest penalty yards per game (86). The only national champion of the past 15 seasons that had season-long numbers like that was the 2001 Miami team, whose averages were nearly identical to LSU’s this year. Clearly, the Tigers would be helping themselves if they cleaned up their act.

You’ll note that in the years since that January 2008 championship game, the penalty averages of national champions has been skewed by the Nick Saban Coaches Alabama factor. For most who follow the Southeastern Conference, that needs no further explanation. He’s Nick Saban, and his Crimson Tide teams won national titles in the 2009, 2011 and 2012 seasons. It’s the same Alabama that’s a short drive from conference headquarters in Birmingham, a fact not lost upon SEC fans convinced that Tide teams historically catch a break because of that proximity. Besides, before he was Nick Saban®, he was just a guy coaching at LSU, and his 2003 team won the BCS national championship despite ranking 82nd in the country in fewest penalties, 73rd in fewest penalty yards. The numbers for his teams in 2009, ’11 and ’12 make an interesting argument for what happens when a coach with a reputation for attention to detail, a notorious perfectionist, lands at a school with a reputation for getting the benefit of the doubt when it’s got a shot at a championship.

No matter the decade and its fashion crimes, it’s always de rigueur to suspect something is amiss with the officiating in college football. Danielson said most officials work hard and are committed to doing the job right, and that it was common for him to see them in airports after games and have them ask him, “Did I get that call right?” After seeing replays in the booth, Danielson could tell them before they would hear it from the SEC office.

But the human nature theory holds true, in my book. I agree they’re going to look more closely at the dominant team.

Funny flag facts

My research before that 2008 title game revealed something else that was interesting: Ten of the 13 teams the penalty-prone Tigers played before the championship game had fewer penalties against LSU than their season average. From my story: Florida had two penalties against LSU, but averaged 8.17 per game. Auburn had three penalties against LSU, but averaged 6.17 per game. South Carolina had two penalties against LSU, but averaged 5.75 per game. Tennessee had no penalties against LSU in the SEC Championship Game, but averaged 5.31 per game.

In the BCS title game, LSU played one of its best games, being penalized just four times for 36 yards. Ohio State was flagged seven times for 83 yards. That season, by the way, Ohio State was 27th in fewest penalties per game, 14th in fewest penalty yards — so, far too clean to win a national championship in that crazy run of champs with penalty flags virtually affixed to their uniforms.

If you look closely at the stats, you’ll see there’s usually no more than a handful of penalties’ difference between the most flag-averse teams and the most flag-prone. But a handful can be a big decider in an important game, and even in an afterthought game.

All of that being said, in thinking about penalties and what recent history shows, I was reminded that the sports world, particularly with football, is filled with the kinds of things coaches and media types say before games that don’t necessarily prove to be carve-it-in-rock true.

“To have a chance against State, Tech has to cut down on its turnovers.”
“If they want to have any hope of winning, they must have better starting field position.”
“The tendency toward penalties has to be addressed, or this team isn’t going anywhere.”

After the fact, those statements and others often prove to be just something people say. Like, too long, didn’t read. Or, cool story, bro.

Remember …

So yeah, the too-long, didn’t-read takeaway here is the headline: You can have a lot of penalties and win a national championship.

I’m not saying a team should aim for having more penalties, but as history shows, it’s not a deal-breaker.

Oh, and the worst team in the country right now for penalties? The No. 5-ranked Baylor Bears, one of those Big conference teams. They’re averaging 13 penalties and 114.33 penalty yards per game. Top-ranked Ohio State is 99th in penalties, No. 4-ranked TCU is 94th, and No. 7-ranked UCLA is 93rd. How about that, huh?

♦

If this were a post about a TV series and I were Alan Sepinwall, this post would end with a few notes, some extras. I’d call it lagniappe, a little something extra. Such as:

• The notion of having a reputation, good or bad, prompted references in my 2008 story to the better Miami Dolphins teams of the 1970s, and to the close calls Pete Rose got as a hitter known for having such a good eye.
• It’s interesting to note how often Navy is the best in the country at avoiding penalty flags. Army and Air Force also show up as best on the list of the past 15 seasons. Reputation? Respect? (Aside: When I was a freshman on the McNeese State baseball team, we played Army in a doubleheader in Lake Charles, Louisiana. An Army player was called out at first base on a bad call by the umpire, and this is what the Cadet yelled: “Geez, ump!”)
• For grins and giggles, I looked up the penalty numbers of 2002 runner-up Miami, a team that many say really won the national championship game but was robbed by one of the worst officiating calls ever. Had the call gone the Hurricanes’ way and not Ohio State’s, the national champion that year would have been Miami, which ranked 113th in fewest penalties (9.54), 114th in fewest penalty yards (81.15).
• The topic of presnap penalties, as now, was in the air in January 2008. “When you have those penalties, all it is,” LSU center Brett Helms said, “is lack of focus, and I don’t think there’s much you can do about that except for being more disciplined.” Said offensive tackle Ciron Black: “It’s really on the player. It’s up to that person. He can have so much going on in the back of his mind about what he’s about to do, who he’s about to get, calls he has to make — and a snap count is the last thing that comes into mind, but that’s probably the most important.”
• The two game-week highlights before the 1981 Sugar Bowl were Herschel Walker and the Georgia Bulldogs break-dancing in the French Quarter, and Bill Hathaway and yours truly finding a parking space — on New Year’s Day, the morning of the game — in front of Cafe du Monde.
• Thanks to a dear friend, I saw Notre Dame’s next game in person, too — the 1981 season opener against LSU in South Bend, Indiana. It was Gerry Faust’s debut as coach of the Irish, and Notre Dame’s 27-9 victory, along with some upsets that weekend, helped bump the Irish to the No. 1 ranking. One of Notre Dame’s quarterbacks that day: Blair Kiel, uncle of current University of Cincinnati quarterback Gunner Kiel (who at one time committed to play at LSU).
• The weirdest stat leading up to the Ohio State-LSU championship game in January 2008? The average penalty yards per game of their opponents that season were identical — 37.2 yards. It seemed so unlikely, I did the math three times.

Carly Dubois, who wrote this piece (and this short bio), covered LSU for The Advocate in Baton Rouge from 1999-2008.To save you the trouble of looking, she wants you to know that there’s almost nothing else sports-related on this site, but she thanks you for stopping by.