re: The 2 teams that played for the national championship last year

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Has this ever happened? Is this the effects of NIL/portal?

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I can't speak for Florida, but LSU lost 7 of their top 9 position players and arguably their 5 best pitchers.

Rebuilding years happen in college sports.

LSU also isn't that bad this year. We're an above average pitching team and average hitting team. Florida has the worst pitching staff in the conference and is a below average hitting team. LSU quite frankly hasn't made plays when it's mattered most. There's about 5 losses on the conference schedule that just should not have been losses. LSU could very easily be looking at a top 8 seed if they don't blow games they had no business of blowing.

We currently have 11 wins. You could make an argument that LSU easily could have won Florida game 2, Arkansas game 2 and 3 (White was about a foot away from taking the lead in game 3 with 2 outs), Vandy game 2, Mizzou game 2, Alabama games 1 and 3. That's 7 games. That would put LSU fighting for 20 wins this weekend.

On the flip side, I genuinely can't think of a game that we've "gotten away with" outside of Maybe Mississippi State game 2 when we blew the big lead. That's just how thin the margins are in the SEC.