Must-see TV for football’s brainy set

Published 6:36 am Friday, December 30, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">ORLANDO, Fla. — Pull up a chair. Get popcorn. Settle in and maybe take notes.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Where Saturday’s Citrus Bowl fits in the popular “meaningless bowl” discussion is up for debate. But LSU-Louisville could also be must-see TV for football’s brainy set, those who prefer a decidedly cerebral approach to the manly game.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Sure, it will likely involve the usual flying large bodies and Richter scale head-on collisions, the cracked heads spectacular catches, not to mention a few replay reviews and, who knows, it might even be decided by an untimely penalty.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But there’s an ongoing subplot that could unfold like a classic chess match in cleats.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda vs. Louisville head coach Bobby Petrino.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This could be one for the ages, but mostly for the X-and-O junkies, the ones who know better than to scream “That NEVER works” every time their team runs up the middle.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This is the brainy set at work.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Aranda is LSU’s prized defensive coordinator. Petrino is Louisville’s head coach.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Louisville reportedly has an offensive coordinator, but that’s not really important now.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The Cardinals actually had co-coordinators, but Lonnie Galloway was suspended for the game for his role in Wakeyleaks, and Chris Klenakis has a title but mostly tries to stay out Petrino’s way during games.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“Coach Petrino calls our plays,” Klenakis said every time he got a semi-tough question at Thursday’s press conference.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Does he ever. Always has. Always will.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Petrino may never win the Mr. Congeniality award among coaches.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But when you keep getting hired after scandalous, extramarital motorcycle wrecks (Arkansas) or abandoning a team in midseason with a Post-it note (Atlanta Falcons), you must be doing something right.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Louisville swallowed hard and hired him back after he’d once abandoned the Cardinals for greener pastures.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The guy can flat dial up some ball plays. It’s what he does.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s an offensive mind that never stops working, and he makes no bones about his genius. You can almost hear him cackling in the background after some of his handiwork at the expense of another dumbstruck, usually out-of-position defense.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He’ll be matching wits with Aranda, LSU’s wunderkind defensive junkie whom the Tigers did not consult with Hollywood casting before hiring a year ago.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He does not fit the slightly deranged mode of the stereotype for the job.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Aranda talks football in even, calculated tones, like he’s a corporate bespectacled CEO explaining fourth-quarter earnings in the closed-door board room.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Or Aranda could be the silent, methodical East European assassin in a big-screen spy thriller, calmly keeping emotion out of his deadly and dastardly work.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Or maybe he’s the steely-eyed nerd on the SWAT team, disarming the time bomb with measured nonchalance as the seconds tick down.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He’s a hopeless football junkie with a obsession for defense. He studies it, constantly tinkers with it, always looks for ways to simplify it from his side while</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">confounding all those who try to crack it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Louisville has been warned that LSU has athletes like it hasn’t seen doing Aranda’s bidding.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Louisville has the Heisman Trophy winner, although you’d never know it by Thursday’s press conference where Lamar Jackson wasn’t deemed important enough to bring along.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But he’s been a party to 51 touchdowns this year, by land and by air and mostly by athletic derring do, the ultimate weapon to put in the hands of a mad scientist like Petrino.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So Louisville may be Aranda’s biggest challenge, Petrino the ultimate foe in an eye-to-eye, stare-down chess match.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But, calm and business-like as ever, he refuses to make it personal.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I don’t,” he said when asked about any “chess match.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I can see with Coach Petrino, though, I can see him … get people.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It sounds like horrible atrocities but the Aranda poker face never changes.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“The quarter beaters,” he said, an apparent reference to some Petrino plays that wreak havoc on quarter coverage in the secondary.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“He has the best quarter beaters you could ever draw up, and he calls them at the right time,” he adds, but it’s just the facts, ma’am, no hint as to whether it scares Aranda silly or if he can’t wait for Petrino to bring one at him.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You can’t bet he’s been tinkering with things.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But he has to be coy.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“They have a ‘look-over game,’ “ Aranda said, again speaking a foreign language known only to the coaching hierarchy. It’s apparently what I call the “meerkat” ploy, where offensive linemen pop up from the stance to get new instructions.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“If he sees something from a defense that he doesn’t like, that is not advantageous to them … (he) changes the play, and he’s got you right back in a beater.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“All of those things forces the defense to have to be flexible and not be stagnant.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">As he spoke, he seemed to be playing with ideas in his head. It was hard to tell.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He doesn’t give many clues.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But it’s Petrino’s move next.</span>