LSU football: 5 best seasons in program history

Ranking the five best LSU football seasons ever, including the 2019 team that had a 15-0 record and won the fourth national championship in program history.

What a year it was for the Bayou Bengals. The LSU Tigers put together arguably the greatest season college football has ever seen. They went 15-0 en route to a College Football Playoff National Championship. In the annals of college football history, this season for LSU football ranks right up there with the 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers and the 2001 Miami Hurricanes.

While it was a monumental season for the Tigers, this wasn’t their first rodeo in winning a national title. To date, LSU has won four national titles and nearly had a fifth. Interestingly enough, all four titles have come with a different head coach at the helm. It’s a testament to the talent in-state in Louisiana, as well as the players’ determination to get it done when they’re on a good run.

So what we’re going to do today is take a look back at the best seasons in LSU football history. While the Bayou Bengals have been far formidable ever since Nick Saban arrived in the early 2000s, they have had great years generations prior, most notably in the late 1950s. Though it might be hard to get back to a championship in 2020, LSU is in fantastic shape as a program.

Here are the five greatest seasons in the history of LSU football.

LSU was already cooking with napalm as a program under head coach Les Miles when the 2011 NCAA season came around. In six years at LSU, Miles had already won a national title, the third in program history. Though the offense never really thrived during his time in Baton Rouge, the LSU defense was never better under his watch than it was in 2011.

Led by a sophomore sensation in the secondary, Tyrann Mathieu, better known as the Honey Badger, LSU went 12-0 (8-0) during the regular season. LSU beat seven ranked teams that season, including No. 2 Alabama in Tuscaloosa in a defensive struggle that was briefly known as the Game of the Century. The Tigers obliterated Georgia in the SEC Championship to play for it all.

If 2004 was the year that helped jumpstart the idea of the College Football Playoff, 2011 was one of the most important years to follow to ensure the postseason dream of being a reality. LSU had to face SEC West rival Alabama for the national title, a team it beat early and didn’t even play for a conference championship. Oklahoma State and Stanford were outstanding teams that year, too.

Despite the BCS National Championship game being played in LSU’s backyard in New Orleans, the Crimson Tide crushed LSU’s championship dreams by virtue of a 21-0 shutout. This loss for LSU carried over into future seasons, as Miles’ perpetually inert offense led to his midseason firing in 2016. Not until 2019 had the Bayou Bengals been championship-caliber. It was eight long years.