Dr Anthony Fauci sat before the Senate yesterday, rescuing what otherwise would have been an admittedly thin day in LSU football history.

On July 30, 2020, the SEC adopted a ten-game, conference-only football schedule, officially canceling Texas’s scheduled visit to Tiger Stadium. It erased the marquee out-of-conference return game LSU had awaited since the schools announced their home-and-home series in 2014, along with what would have been the Longhorns’ first appearance in Baton Rouge since 1953.

None of it had to happen, of course. The decision was announced with the careful, propagandic institutional language that governed nearly everything in 2020: safety, medical guidance, caution, and unprecedented circumstances—much of it from the mouth of Dr Anthony Fauci. Like so many government and media pronouncements that year, it presented a wildly disproportionate reaction as the only responsible choice.

None of it had to happen, of course. The decision was announced with the careful, propagandic institutional language that governed nearly everything in 2020: safety, medical guidance, caution and unprecedented circumstances. Fauci never set the SEC schedule, nor was he commanding the larger operation. He functioned as its most recognizable public instrument—the familiar face through which a much larger government-and-media apparatus presented decisions like this as humane and virtuous. Like so many pronouncements that year, wildly disproportionate reactions were presented as the only responsible choices. Fauci’s inconsistent messaging helped sell the ever-increasing squeeze on the American people, but the operation neither began nor ended with him. It was larger, and more nefarious, than any portion Americans are allowed to see on the screen.

The proportion of his role notwithstanding, the timing of his trip to Washington in today’s news could hardly be better for this particular anniversary. In 2022, Fauci promised that he would “cooperate fully” with congressional oversight, adding, “I have nothing to hide.” On Wednesday, appearing under subpoena before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions more than 100 times. The committee is now preparing to vote on whether to hold him in contempt.

We are not judging his soul here, even though he remains unrepentant, but the fact is that the official who once assured the country that he would explain and defend everything if called upon declined to explain or defend virtually anything when questioned under oath.

Back to 2020, by July, many Americans had already diagnosed the sham. They had watched the original promises and fear-mongering projections change while the goalposts shifted every week. They’d heard the oh-so-scary music paired with the latest death totals lead off the nightly newscasts ten—or a hundred—times too many. The entire presentation had been greatly exaggerated. Plenty of people said so at the time, only to be mocked by those who considered themselves smarter. Meanwhile, every part of ordinary life was turned into a supposed emergency, making mass cowardice appear virtuous.

It was incredibly emasculating, all of it. For the people who didn’t fight back.

Fauci was one of the front men in creating the atmosphere in which such contradictions could be imposed without serious explanation. The SEC’s solution demonstrated the absurdity. Playing Texas in Tiger Stadium was deemed too dangerous, but playing ten conference opponents in many of the same stadiums was acceptable. Texas and LSU both played football that fall. They simply were not permitted to play each other.

What disappeared was one of the most anticipated home games in recent LSU history.

When the series was announced in 2014, LSU fans understood that the return game would be special. Texas had not entered Tiger Stadium since 1953, and the six-year wait only increased expectations.

Then came Austin in 2019. Yes, that 2019. You remember the game….

Early September and sweltering in central Texas. Depending on whose postgame account you believed, the air conditioning in the Tigers’ locker room had somehow “organically” failed. Joe Burrow threw for 471 yards and four touchdowns, leading LSU to a 45–38 victory that made clear something was vastly different on the offensive side of the ball. His third-and-17 completion to Justin Jefferson became one of the defining plays of LSU’s championship season. We even wrote a story about it on March 17, 2020:

“That is the difference in LSU,” raved ABC analyst Kirk Herbstreit. “Even me up here, I’m thinking, You’ve got the lead. Run the ball. Make them use their last timeout. But this is 2019 LSU. This is Joe Burrow. Forget that. ‘We’re here to win. We’re here to play for championships.’”

“What a great play,” said then-head coach Ed Orgeron. “I’m always going to remember that play.”

We all do, Coach.

But we remember a lot more today. While sports has become part of the bread and circuses—something we should consider when deciding how much emotional investment to give it—it can also preserve the memory of things far more important than sports. The methods used in 2020 could return, particularly if the warnings about Agenda 2030 prove true. Whether your first concern is your family, your faith in Jesus Christ, or simply keeping LSU football penciled in on Saturday, we should remember how this happened six years ago and do what we can to prevent it from happening again.

The return game in 2020 was supposed to bring Texas into a packed Tiger Stadium to face the defending national champions. Instead, it became another casualty of the absolute madness and panic, leaving LSU to play a strange 5–5 season in a Tiger Stadium capped at a fraction of capacity. That season became the beginning of the end for Orgeron.

Now, six years later, the Longhorns are finally coming. And at least on paper, they’ll be loaded.

The circumstances are entirely different, of course. Burrow and the 2019 Tigers are gone. Texas now belongs to the SEC, and Lane Kiffin will lead LSU rather than Ed Orgeron. This isn’t close to the rematch anticipated on that hot September night in 2019.

But Texas got its home game. LSU never received the return trip it was promised.

When the Longhorns enter Tiger Stadium on November 14, they will make their first visit since 1953, one week after Alabama comes to Baton Rouge. Together, those games will reveal plenty about whether Kiffin’s first LSU team is ready to enter the program into the New Year spotlight.

For the more rabid Tiger fans tempted to read that appetite literally, Bevo and the elephant should both make it out of Baton Rouge safely. Many of those same fans have probably already concluded with cynicism that Fauci will remain free to roam as well. If he doesn’t, no one should mistake the fall guy for the true fire beneath.

The game never needed to disappear. Six years later, Mike finally gets Bevo at home—one week after the elephant—and an LSU program starved for national relevance will be hungry for both.