Make no mistake about it.

Somehow, someway, but mostly somewhere (to be determined) and sometime (TBA) the LSU-South Carolina game will get itself played, the full 60 minutes worth (or remaining television time).

The scheduled 11 a.m. kickoff in Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, South Carolina, might be in doubt.

But they’re going to have themselves a game, come hell or more high water.

After all, it’s a Southeastern Conference game.

And they’ll get ‘er done, so to speak.

The South Carolina capital is suffering through Biblical flooding at the moment, but never mind.

A conference game is going to get played.

Of course, LSU had itself a garden-variety lightning storm intrude on the season opener last month at home with McNeese and somehow couldn’t work out the logistics to get the game played, either later that night or the next day.

But this apparently is different.

LSU will go wherever authorities tell the Tigers to show up, be there at whatever appointed hour they decide is most convenient for all involved, and make the best of it.

Shoot, the Heisman Trophy might even be at stake.

LSU is well aware of the problems facing South Carolina staging the gala of an SEC football game. The Tigers have been there, done that, even if they didn’t quite get it done under far less taxing circumstances when it involved the McNeese game.

By all accounts, Williams-Brice Stadium is fine. There were some crudely crafted Internet Photoshop prank jobs that depicted the joint in need of an ark and a duck blind.

But, in reality, by all accounts, the South Carolina campus itself and the off-campus stadium were spared the flood waters.

“As far as our situation here, the field conditions, we’ve been spared,” South Carolina Athletic Director Ray Tanner said Tuesday. “Great drainage. We’re in pretty good shape.

“Maybe a few spots that had some excessive rain flooding, but nothing very serious at all.”

The stadium looks fairly pristine. It won’t be the issue.

The problem, as LSU is well aware from its Katrina/Rita scrambling a decade ago, is that it takes a ton of infrastructure to pull off an SEC football game.

Tiger Stadium was fine back then.

But many of the game-day workers are police officers, first-responders and such, whose expertise — same as at LSU a decade ago — might be better directed elsewhere in the Columbia area.

So they are exploring other options. At the least they’re trying to get together a Plan B, just in case.

If there’s an alternative plan, South Carolina hopes to get if figured out sometime today.

Apparently, the Georgia Dome in Atlanta is a possibility. Georgia State has a game scheduled at 2:30 p.m., but surely that could be worked around into a doubleheader. For that matter, Georgia Tech’s 55,000-seat stadium in downtown Atlanta is available.

So is Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium, home of the NFL Carolina Panthers, although a NASCAR race is in town this weekend, which has a good portion of the hotel rooms spoken for.

Nashville has been mentioned.

For that matter, only the expanded SEC could offer an alternative Columbia for the game, the spare one they have tucked away up in Missouri. It’s far piece, however, from both schools, and, besides, the Gamecocks were just there last weekend and it didn’t feel much like home with a 24-10 loss.

So there’s also the possibility of moving the game to Baton Rouge, to Tiger Stadium.

That, after all, is what LSU did a decade ago when its own campus was too overrun with Katrina fallout to stage a proper game. The Tigers moved their scheduled home game with Arizona State way out to the Sun Devils’ campus stadium in Tempe.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

So LSU flew from the bayous to the desert for a “home” game.

LSU surely would jump at the chance to return the favor for Gamecocks.

Just in case, LSU was canvassing its legions of game-day personnel to see if they could put on call for possible duty in Tiger Stadium come Saturday.

These are the same people, presumably, that LSU was so skeptical that it could round up a quorum of to come back the following day of the McNeese false start.

But this is a conference game, and if it means turning an SEC road game into a home affair, LSU surely will bite the bullet and persevere.

The Tigers, I’m sure, would even agree to let South Carolina wear its home dark jerseys and force LSU into the dress whites.

Oh, wait, bad example.

But whatever it takes, seems to be LSU’s theory on this.

You just wonder where all this LSU can-do spirit was when it was the McNeese game in the balance.

l

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com

(Associated Press)

Gerald Herbert