Oh believe me, I'm extremely glad to have lived through many of the LSU seasons I lived through. I was vaguely aware of LSU football when I was a kid because my dad brought me to Ole Miss games, and it's just a cultural thing when you grow up in Baton Rouge. But I was big into basketball back then. It was my favorite sport to play, so I guess it's natural that it was what most interested me. There were some decent teams in the late 80's, but I kinda knew about them, moreso than followed them. And of course, games weren't on TV so much back then.
Then when I got a little more interested--about middle school--the 90's happened, where we were awful for a decade. Like, 3-8 awful. It sucked to pay attention more and get more interested and the team be so bad, but it was what it was.
When Saban turned things around it was a magical time. I never took the Les Miles years for granted and I've been harsh on the hordes of LSU fans who did/do.
I think I trace the death of my give-a-damn to a specific point in the 2014 LSU/Alabama game. It didn't happen all at once, but I clearly recall a moment when I thought, "What am I doing? Why do I care so much? I'm not so sure this interests me like it did." The interest was still rather strong at that point, though.
I hate to say this, but that snowballed the next few years, and, unfortunately, while I gave it a lot of lip service, the 2019 season never excited me or caused me to care like I wished I did. I was fully aware of what I was watching. I knew I should be loving the hell out of it. But it never meant as much to me as 2003, for example, or 2007. Or other seasons that didn't end with NCs. One sad piece of evidence of that is I can't name tons of guys from that team, just the major stars, really. otoh, I can still remember the backup left-guard from the 2005 team, and a long list of people like him, from many years. I remember events and game-flow from specific games, who we played, what point in the season we played them, all the narratives.
Literally, I can't remember who we played earlier this year. The other day I saw something about us winning against Vanderbilt last year and I thought to myself "We played Vandy last year?"
But, ask me about LSU vs. Vandy circa 2005, and I can tell you tons about that game, even where I was watching it and with who.
Just seems like if 2019 inspired a "That's nice" from me, and everything since has merited a "Sucking sucks. Oh well," then it becomes clear something just isn't hitting like it used to.
