Enough hot air for a real hurricane

Published 6:00 pm Wednesday, July 12, 2017

HOOVER, Ala. — It’s on.

For years, LSU and Florida couldn’t even decide if they liked playing each other every season.

Now they’ve suddenly become one another’s biggest, baddest, bitterest rivals?

That’s what SEC Media Days 2017 was doing its best to stir up Tuesday.

Mission somewhat accomplished.

If you’ve been following the summer’s habitual breakdown in Southeastern Conference diplomacy, you know it mostly centers around what could have been an LSU home game this fall suddenly becoming Florida’s homecoming game.

Against the Tigers.

Yes, Florida, which thanks to last year’s maneuvering has plenty of home-game options for such pageantry, chose LSU to play a role that at most places is traditionally reserved for rent-a-wins.

LSU is about as outraged as fans can get on social media and whatnot.

Florida is properly smug.

Maybe the Gators are more concerned about beating a start-up program like Alabama-Birmingham on Nov. 18 or Northern Colorado on Sept. 9 than LSU on Oct. 7.

That’s the impression at LSU, at least, with the Tigers citing a clear “lack of respect” by getting (HC) stencilled next to their name on the Gators’ schedule.

The media was lapping it up Tuesday because, well, it’s early July and a perfect opportunity for these things get blown way out of proportion.

“I’m just loving the fact that you (media) think it’s news,” said Florida coach Jim McElwain, who Tuesday spent a lot more time explaining his homecoming opponent than his opener against Michigan or an intriguing quarterback situation.

Fortunately, he brought some players with him.

“It blew up,” said Gators’ offensive lineman Martez Ivey. “It was always about FSU (Florida State). Now it’s all about LSU, LSU, LSU. … Scheduling on our homecoming makes it even more interesting.

“They’re going to take it personal and we’re going to take it personal.”

Maybe LSU could retaliate by making Florida its homecoming opponent in 2018 — oh, wait, that won’t work. Because of the hamfisted negotiations in the midst of Hurricane Matthew last season, the Tigers will go to Gainesville for the next two seasons.

So Florida is taunting from a position of power, even though Tuesday was the Gators’ two-week anniversary of their College World Series championship victory over LSU and it never came up during the football rants.

Florida’s official Twitter account was quick to respond to the controversy, positing that the “Gators’ homecoming has been an SEC opponent 20 of last 21 years, including 2X vs. LSU. (96, 06).”

Maybe in less sensitive, politically correct times, that would have sufficed.

In today’s world it could still be construed as blatant disrespect. And LSU has been happy to do so.

So McElwain felt obliged to act as if he was off on a secluded mountain lake in Montana somewhere when all this came down.

Which, it turns out (he claims at least), is exactly where he was — on vacation.

“I got off the plane,” he explained of his return, only to learn that LSU would be his homecoming opponent. “Unlike coach (Nick) Saban at Alabama, it’s a university choice. They didn’t tell me until I got off the plane.”

Being in Montana apparently gives you plausible deniability when it comes to dissing your new best rival.

But it’s clear — for now (July) at least — it’s rivalry on. Bitterness escalated.

This, of course all dates to last year’s postponement of the Oct. 15 game in Gainesville due to the approaching Hurricane Matthew (which turned out to be a dud) and rescheduling it for No. 19 in Baton Rouge.

Florida, which stalled all week in advance of the nasty weather, was in the wrong before the game wasn’t played — it should have been played, somewhere, somehow, and could have been if the Gators had planned better.

LSU was just as much in the wrong after the fact when Athletic Director Joe Alleva “negotiated” — that word was actually used at the time — the deal that moved the game to Baton Rouge.

The bill now comes due for that “deal,” which didn’t seem too bad in the short term.

The Tigers should have sucked it up, put on their bigboy pants, and found a way to Gainesville on Nov. 19 for the makeup date, even if it meant ending the season with three consecutive road games.

It’s not much more than an hour flight from Baton Rouge. It wasn’t like they were going to have to hitchhike.

Hindsight, sure, but as it played out LSU won the two road games and lost the extra home game.

“They (LSU) got exactly what they deserved,” McElwain said at the time, a quote sure to resurface the week of this year’s game.

It wasn’t Commissioner Greg Sankey’s finest hour either; his lack of early decisiveness partly excused by fuzzy interpretations of how strongly and frankly he could have stepped in.

That was cleared up during the SEC’s spring meetings. The commissioner now will decide when and how weather-affected games will get played — and they must get played if a team wants to compete for the conference championship.

But the damage has been done.

And delightfully so.