Foley shifts blame to SEC

Published 3:38 pm Tuesday, October 11, 2016

You really have to hand it to the University of Florida, particularly the Gators’ soon-to-be-retired Athletic Director Jeremy Foley.

That was pretty dadgum slick right there.

Not sure how much blame his LSU counterpart, Joe Alleva should take, but Alleva was certainly outbamboozled on several fronts.

As for Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey, well, he’s a good man and a talented administrator.

As so many of the young student-athletes in his kingdom are fond of saying, this was a life lesson and he can treat it as learning experience and move on. He will survive, although surely this wasn’t his finest moment.

But, for now, let us just step back and marvel at Foley’s handiwork in getting exactly what he wanted in the matter of today’s dearly departed LSU-Florida game.

Foley is retiring on Nov. 1, but he left behind a blueprint that aspiring athletic directors will analyze and study for years. The power-point presentation — how to get what you want on your terms — should be available online any day now.

At this point, I suppose, we need to insert the disclaimer that in the overall scheme of the universe, especially the areas in the path of Hurricane Matthew, a football game is pretty insignificant.

After all, that was Foley’s hole card all along.

But he had to do a lot of bluffing and rope-a-doping before he got to use it.

And it was brilliant. Just masterful.

To clear up one thing: I’m not saying that Florida was afraid to play LSU. But if the Gators were the least bit apprehensive, then this is the way you’d orchestrate getting out of it.

See, LSU was all in from the start, perhaps playing into Foley’s hand.

In retrospect, maybe LSU looked too eager to play the game.

Alleva apparently heard rumors early in the week — it was in all the newspapers — of impending inclement weather and graciously offered the use of Tiger Stadium (well, of course he did; never hurts to offer).

Foley didn’t tip his hand when he politely refused that offer. That reluctance was kind of understandable, though such a move was certainly not unprecedented. LSU did the same thing when South Carolina couldn’t host due to extensive flooding in Columbia last year. The Tigers were on the other end in the aftermath of Katrina, moving their 2005 game with Arizona State out to the desert in the Sun Devils’ home stadium.

LSU probably wasn’t surprised when Florida didn’t bite on that offer.

But “We would have done anything to play the game,” Alleva said.

LSU did make it clear that it didn’t matter what day or place, even if it had to fly in and out the day of the game.

Too anxious, perhaps.

Foley just sat back, exuding confidence that the game would be played in Gainesville, on Saturday.

Apparently he sold the bluff that there was really no need for a Plan B to the point that Gainesville, Saturday, was suddenly nonnegotiable.

Maybe somebody suggested an alternate site, maybe push back to Sunday (LSU was even agreeable to Monday).

Or go to Tampa, perhaps, because the NFL Bucs weren’t using the stadium and the city looked well out of harm’s way. Certainly not neutral.

The city apparently is still standing. I know this because I checked, and the airline flight I was scheduled to be on to Tampa Friday, which was during of the worst of the rest of the state’s pounding, was not even delayed, a rarity even in sunshine.

But Foley kept insisting that Gainesville would get it done.

It’s fair to ask: Where was the SEC?

About all you heard at the time was that the conference office was “monitoring the situation.”

Really?

Not too well, apparently­ — and pretty much in hands-off silence.

Did it not even get suspicious?

Tuesday Alleva ventured a phone call to Foley, suggesting possible alternatives, and was assured again — don’t worry — the game would be played in Gainesville.

The next day, on Wednesday — while Florida was announcing the closing of its campus for Friday’s arrival — Foley was on a UF-LSU-SEC teleconference repeating his confident spiel that all was well, trust us, the game will be played on Saturday in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

Apparently no one at LSU or the SEC office was any the wiser. Foley did add a slight disclaimer on Wednesday that the game time might have to be backed up a tad.

No problem. Perhaps everybody breathed a sigh of relief for the wiggle room.

And then on Thursday — all of a sudden, lo and behold — wait for it, 5-4-3-2 … omigosh, there’s a hurricane a coming. Run for your lives. There’s no way to play a game in this mess.

Jim Cantori on line one.

Somebody in the UF athletic department finally turned on The Weather Channel.

And here was the real brilliance.

The SEC had to get involved at this point — never mind it was about three days late to the party — and lest anybody call the Gators out, Foley was then able to raise up his hands and say, hey, the SEC made the call to cancel, it was out of his hands.

He wasn’t done.

Any questions about how Florida handled the week had a simple answer: a football game wasn’t high on the list of the state’s priorities at the moment.

Boom! Go ahead, argue with that, and feel like a heel.

And, still, Foley wasn’t done.

He said Florida was working with LSU to reschedule the game at a later date, although Alleva said that just wasn’t true, that it has not been discussed.

And, in fact, LSU has several reasons to balk at the possible solutions that have been floated.

We’ll get to that here another day.

But it was one last inspirational stroke by Foley that suddenly shifted the hesitancy from Florida to LSU.

So who’s chicken now?

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at shobbs@americanpress.com

Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley (Associated Press)