ATLANTA -- THE PARTY started weeks ago. In Louisiana, this was all a foregone conclusion. A national championship game is to be played, in New Orleans of all places, and so of course LSU would be there. This was destiny.
The Tigers players knew it, too. They spent the past two weeks watching film of an undersized, undermanned, overmatched Oklahoma, and they knew how this would end.
"It's conversations we had all week," tailback Clyde Edwards-Helaire said. "We knew we'd put up 40 or 50.