Best-case scenario not likely for LSU

Published 6:00 pm Friday, November 3, 2017

It has come to this fox hole’s attention that perhaps I have been too negative this week in regards to LSU’s upcoming game against Nick Saban and Alabama.

The complaints have been mostly civil, even friendly and jovial.

They have come via catcalls, emails, text message, certified mail or even, as Ed Orgeron phrased it while discussing another matter on the SEC teleconference Wednesday, by “turning on the internet.”

He made it sound like you hand-crank your way through Twitter and Facebook, but anyways, the point has been taken.

Maybe I have been a tad fatalistic about this thing, although for the life of me I can’t remember a game thinking LSU had less of a chance.

But it’s football. Anything can happen. We all know that.

So, without further ado and herewith, we present the ways, reasons, scenarios or sunspots and silver linings in which a tough — but flawed and outmanned — LSU team has a chance to beat the scariest, most powerful, invincible college football juggernaut ever assembled in peace time.

……

Uh.

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Hey, I’m thinking about it.

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Give me a minute here.

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You think this is easy?

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(Insert awkward pause)

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Something will come to me.

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(Direction from stage left: “Just make something up!”)

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I’ll think of something.

OK, I’m ready. Really. Here we go. Let’s find something that suggests LSU might break that six-year Bama stranglehold.

The McRib is back! 

No, that doesn’t qualify as a hopeful sign?

OK.

Let’s get serious.

Try this.

Alabama may well make it seven straight, but at least it will be different.

LSU offensive coordinator Matt Canada is not going to beat his head against the Bama wall, which (in effect, trying beating the Tide at their own game) has been the LSU game plan for the previous six losses.

Even Saban has said Canada’s pre-snap sleight of hand (smoke and mirrors) is something you don’t see and prepare for every day.

Who knows? Maybe he can come up with something that doesn’t require the blocking of large Crimson objects to score points.

More?

Les Miles himself has predicted an Alabama victory. It anguished the Mad Hatter to admit it. He still loves him some LSU. But on his podcast (yes, he has one; Google at your own risk) he said, “As much as I hate to admit it, if I had to bet the house, I’d have to bet on Alabama.”

Historians may take note that in each of the previous six frustrations, Miles was convinced LSU was going to win, though presumably he didn’t bet his house on it (it’s still in Baton Rouge in his name).

More?

LSU is healthier than it has been all year and intends to stay that way. Who’s to say it won’t make all the difference? Not me. Not in this exercise, anyway.

Besides, yeah, Alabama has won six in a row, but it’s not like LSU was drawn and quartered in all of them.

Several times the Tigers put quite a scare into Saban. The Tide didn’t score until the fourth quarter of last year’s 10-0 game. Two other times the Tigers led in the fourth quarter and needed only to stop a third-and-long to prevent a late Bama comeback.

And you don’t hear anybody use the phrase third-and-Dave Aranda like they did with former defensive coordinator John Chavis.

So there’s that.

But mainly the game is in Tuscaloosa. Normally, that would be a problem. But LSU once went 31 years — from 1969 to 2000 — without beating Alabama in Baton Rouge.

The Tide think Tiger Stadium is their own personal time share, where they often break up the furniture and good china.

Yet the Tigers have, for the most part, played this game better on Alabama soil, even though, admittedly, the SEC office is just an hour away.

Capped by that last LSU win in the rivalry, 9-6 in the Game of the Century in 2011, the Tigers had gone 11-4 in the last 15 games on Bama’s turf (3-0 in the last three in Birmingham before the Tide abandoned Legion Field).

And not all those Bama teams were coached by Mike Dubose.

Not convinced?

You think this week looks bleak, what with Bama favored by 211⁄2 points?

Believe it or not, that’s not the biggest spread in the series.

Let’s go back to 1993. 

The point spread for that LSU-Bama game, according to one Alabama newspaper’s headline, was “When Pigs Fly,” which somehow translated numerically to 24 points in Las Vegas.

Alabama was the defending national champion and unbeaten in its previous 31 games (the Tide were once-tied, which was legal then).

LSU was 3-5, and while those particular Tigers hadn’t lost to Troy, they were about a month removed from the worst loss in school history, 58-3 to Florida — at home.

Yet LSU beat Bama 17-14 and stunned everyone in Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Curley Hallman -— youngsters, ask your parents — pulled that one off against Gene Stallings, and even though nobody to this day has figured out how, it wasn’t a fluke.

Stuff does happen.

Or think of it this way, and it really makes sense: If Troy can beat LSU — and I’m pretty sure the Trojans still did — then it only takes a slight leap of faith to think the Tigers can beat Alabama.

Sorry, but that’s the best I’ve got for you.

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com