Tiger pulling wool over voters’ eyes

Published 8:14 am Monday, October 5, 2015

BATON ROUGE — Is this a wonderful country or what?

Just ask LSU.

College football is the bomb.

If you’re the Tigers, you slumbered and muddled through a nondescript game, accomplished very little of the game plan, alternately put an amazingly full stadium to sleep and scared it half to death and on and on and on.

The general consensus was that the Tigers should be ashamed of themselves and, to their credit, they looked none too overjoyed in what passed for the postgame afterglow.

But LSU 44, Eastern Michigan 22 must have looked a whole lot better on paper than it did in person or on hi-def. 

The Tigers no doubt were worried about running extra laps for it.

Yet, in this great and wonderful Land of Illusion and Home of the Voting Poll, LSU woke up, lo and behold, to learn it was suddenly a top five team.

Reputable coaches cast their ballots — they have spoken — and the Tigers are now the No. 5 team in the country. 

The media was slightly more restrained with its own poll, moving the Tigers up two spots from No. 9 to No. 7.

But still, that’s not a bad slight of hand if you can get away with it.

Most of the ballots were no doubt cast sight unseen.

It turns out you can hide, even a 102,000-seat stadium, if there’s a lot more interesting TV fare available nationwide viewing.

I can only guess that’s the explanation,

But what does anybody who was actually in Tiger Stadium for this “coming out party” think?

They probably think that if that was the No. 5 team in the land, then America might as well adopt badminton or cricket and hope rich alums will still buy luxury suites.

LSU certainly isn’t a bad team. The Tigers still have a chance, with normal progression, to be a very good team.

And I don’t know how Eastern Michigan was supposed to stir up LSU’s dander when the Tigers had been told all week — guilty, as charged, here — that merely rolling their helmets onto the turf would surely wilt the Eagles. 

“That’s on the leaders on the team for not stepping up in practice while everybody was joking and playing,” said Leonard Fournette of the week’s apparently casual game preparations.

Fournette’s latest act —another 233-yard rushing night with the usual three touchdowns and multiple highlights — was getting a little old, and it wasn’t what people turned out to see, not this time.

Really, can it be THAT difficult to throw and catch the ball?

It ain’t brain surgery. 

Teams all over America are doing it at an amazing clip. It’s the age of the 100-point over/under. There are teams out there that can hiccup 300, 400 yards in the air, often more.

LSU came out Saturday and basically announced —maybe as much for future defenses planning team portraits at the line of scrimmage as for impatient fans — that, OK, tonight you’re going to see the potential of this club’s passing game.

About all it proved was that quarterback isn’t the only problem.

“There’s nothing that (Brandon Harris) can do to correct it when you hit a guy dead in the hands and he can’t bring it in,” head coach Les Miles said. “ I didn’t say much negative to him at all. 

“Wish we had not dropped balls,” he said before adding, “I think they take for granted the snaps. My message to them is don’t do that.”

The Tigers managed 80 yards passing at the half before basically giving up on the fool notion before somebody got hit in the crossfire.

Maybe they’re thinking too much about it.

Maybe they’re pressing, trying too hard to prove they, too, can do it.

Maybe they need try it like when the golf pro at the driving range tells you to just hit a few without even thinking about your swing.

LSU trying to impersonate a wide-open throwing attack was almost comical. It was Shakespeare as a Saturday Night Live skit.

It just didn’t look right, especially when throwing on — are you sitting down? — first down most of the opening half.

They don’t need to give up on it yet, but it was so out of character, that the Tigers’ offense, even when it was moving, never really seemed to get into its rhythm and flow. 

Fournette had to keep bailing them out of a 4-for-15 throwing night.

This isn’t an offense that needs to be staring at a lot of second-and-10s.

LSU was in its element at the end, when the Tigers just wanted to finish the game and marched 97 yards in 13 straight running plays, from its own 2-yard line to the EMU 1 while using the final 8:30 of the clock before finally taking a knee instead of making it look even more misleading on the scoreboard.

That’s LSU right now.

But if the Tigers are ever to actually earn that top five ranking that they pulled over somebody’s eyes, they’ll have to be more.

“We’re going to catch and throw it,” Miles said almost defiantly afterwards “It’s just that simple,” Miles said. “(Not being able to) is not something that we’re going to take.”

So they’ll keep trying. It could be interesting.