Scooter column: No explaining Saturday’s debacle
Published 2:18 pm Monday, November 21, 2016
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">BATON ROUGE — Stuff happens.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s as simple as that.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Well, not “stuff,” per se.</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Technically, it’s more like … well, come on, we both know what we’re talking about here — mostly stuff that was happening in Tiger Stadium Saturday.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Not good stuff, either, not for the Tigers.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">They weren’t alone.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In fact, it was happening so much all over college football that the bigger miracle would have been if the Tigers had been immune to it all.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Instead, LSU got exactly three points in its final four trips inside the Florida 8-yard line — despite running 17 plays in the neighborhood; it only seemed like the Tigers spent the whole game there — and lost a game that, by all accounts, they were supposed to win.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s not the kind of game to lose if you’re Ed Orgeron and playing on a “people’s choice” mandate while auditioning for the head coaching job.</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">I think it was 16-10 … although reportedly the stadium’s lost & found department is still scrounging around its bins trying locate all the missing LSU points that were reported misplaced somewhere en route to the scoreboard.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Must be here somewhere … all that couldn’t have added up to just 10 points.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And when, exactly, did Florida score anyway, like a touchdown? Oh, yeah, that little 98-yard bomb, out of nowhere, only the longest offensive play ever in Tiger Stadium.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Blame it on the stuff.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Nutty, sometimes unexplainable stuff happens.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The University of Texas, with resources that would make OPEC blush, managed to lose to Kansas Saturday, which ain’t easy.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Ole Miss thought it had found the next (on-field) Johnny Manziel last week and this week got sucker-punched 38-17 by Vanderbilt (while the Commodores, the egg heads of the SEC, once gathered tightly around a slow-rolling punt to get a better, up-close view of the ball meandering deliberately — toward the goal they would be defending).</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So LSU’s Derrius “Wrong Way” Guice wasn’t the only player Saturday who got his directions fouled up backwards.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There was a lot of zigging when a zag would have been far more appropriate.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Tennessee gave up 740 yards to a bad Missouri offense — 420 on the ground — and won the blasted game. And then the Vols had the gall to be mad at LSU for letting Florida win the SEC East.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Arkansas and Mississippi State combined to give up a Big 12-like 1,194 yards, and yet get to keep their SEC membership cards.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Even Alabama, that rock of stability, found itself down 3-0 to Chattanooga after the first quarter. It didn’t amount to anything, of course, other than Nick Saban blowing a gasket, but hopefully somebody from Chattanooga got an Instagram of that early scoreboard for the trophy case.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But it was the stuff that came down in Tiger Stadium that deep-sixed the delightful story that was Orgeron’s unapologetic quest for his dream job.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He suddenly fell out of favor with the fandom, of course, and no amount of making up with them against Texas A&M Thanksgiving night is going to salvage the relationship now.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s easy to point to a fumble on first-and-goal or coming up a half-yard shy to set up a botched field goal attempt earlier in the game.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But most watched the final minute, took notes on the play-calling, and had frightening Les Miles flashbacks.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Actually, the final play call wasn’t so bad. If Guice had sprinted left to take the quick pitch the way the play was called in the huddle rather than mistakenly going right for an awkward, somewhat ad-libbed pitch from Danny Etling, who knows?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The word on the streets is that it would have worked, complete with Zapruder film-style analysis that allegedly shows Guice might could have done somersaults into the end zone.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">We’ll never know for sure.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">What we do know is that it should never have come down to the last play.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU might have lost this one 90 minutes before kickoff when a few Tigers, led by Dwayne Thomas and joined by even Leonard Fournette, decided to invade Florida’s warm-up safe space.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The minor jawing and pushing didn’t amount to much — no charges will be filed — but it was just the kind of stuff to stir up a wounded Gators’ team.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">No need to rattle that cage, but, if you recall, Guice tossed the first salvo a full week earlier by suggesting that Florida couldn’t run from this game any longer.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That macho stuff normally doesn’t matter much, but in what did turn out to be a game of inches, you never know.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">No need to rattle the cage.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You could say the Tigers needed some adult supervision on the Florida matter, but apparently it started at the top. In LSU athletic director Joe Alleva’s emails during the posturing to get the hurricane-postponed game played — which as public record became public knowledge — he seemed to also say that Florida was dodging the game.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So maybe Florida coach Jim McElwain was right. Maybe LSU “got what it deserved.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But you sure hate to see stuff like this happen to a good man like Orgeron.</span>
