It was your old buddy Les Miles, I guess it was, who once suggested using a bulky old, roughneck oilfield wrench, preferably rusty or greasy, as a suitable trophy for the annual LSU-Texas A&M game.

Nothing much ever became of the idea for some reason, and so far as I know no trophy ever emerged for what has turned into a pretty fair rivalry game.

And maybe that’s a shame. Anyway, it’s too late now.

Still, what might have been …

No strangers to each other even before the Aggies joined the Southeastern Conference for the 2012 season, the budding rivalry was happening organically, the way it should be, with the home team having won each of the last eight meetings. And, in either place, it’s a rocking 100,000- plus seat stadium.

But then Texas, the Entitled Longhorns, came barging into the SEC and all bets were off for Thanksgiving weekend.

Texas won’t run this conference the way it often did the Big 12 (and, before that, the old Southwest Conference), and the Longhorns have already had their first SEC temper tantrum during a rude introduction to Georgia. The Aggies might tell them it takes more than Big Oil money.

Still, if the Longhorns are back on Texas A&M’s schedule, the Aggies have a built-in most hated rival whether they wanted UT in the SEC or not (hint: they did not).

And just when LSU looked ready to step up to the plate as a perfect rival.

Texas A&M has been described as being as much of a “cult” as an education, mostly due to influence of “The Corps,” not to mention the silly pep rallies that, frankly, embarrasses the rest of the SEC. Not that the Aggies give a big hoot, it’s fine by them.

Meanwhile, LSU is often mistaken for just another of Louisiana’s tap-the-keg festivals.

But the two schools have more in common than either would like to admit.

There was a day — way back in the day — when LSU, the Ol’ War Skul, was heavy on mandatory ROTC and the campus was just about as militarized as the sprawling Texas A&M expanse is by choice.

And, for that matter, remember what the late, great and witty Mississippi State coach, Mike Leach, said about Texas A&M’s strong military presence?

“How come they get to pretend they are soldiers?” he asked after a game in front of the ever-marching cadets. “The thing is, they aren’t actually in the military. I ought to have Mike’s Pirate School.”

Yet, here LSU and A&M are with a huge game Saturday at bigger-huge Kyle Field, as— a drum roll, please — the last two remaining teams unbeaten in SEC play.

Nothing may come of that either. No matter the winner, either LSU (6-1, 3-0 SEC) or A&M (6-1, 4-0) will have plenty of work to do before reaching the SEC championship game. Which, despite all that oil money, would be the Aggies’ first trip.

LSU has its share of oil barons, too, although they tend to keep a lower profile and don’t do much hiring and firing.

The loser Saturday won’t be eliminated from anything, not mathematically anyway.

Yet, even this year, the two schools have taken almost copy-cat routes to the weekend’s marquee game.

“Eerily similar, right?” said first-year Texas A&M coach Mike Elko, who, like LSU’s Brian Kelly, is a transplanted nawthener still trying to learn the regional language and lingo.

“Probably in some ways, both got written off a little bit and just went to work to get better and improved every week,” Kelly said. “All of a sudden you pick your head up and here you are.”

Both could have used a breakfast-ball mulligan off the first tee.

LSU’s last-second loss to Southern Cal to open the season didn’t look so bad at the time. But it hasn’t aged well as the Trojans’ debut in the Big Ten (1-4 so far) makes what Georgia did to Texas in the SEC look like a friendly visit from neighborhood Welcome Wagon.

The Aggies’ season-opening 23-13 loss to Notre Dame didn’t look all that embarrassing at the time either— until the Irish lost to Northern Illinois the very next week.

But it wasn’t the end of the world either.

“Very similar to what our team has been doing,” Kelly said. “We lose our opener. They lost their opener and played better and better every week.”

And now they’ve each reeled off six consecutive wins to run into each other.

Fancy meeting you here.

It should be no surprise Kelly got the Tigers turned around after losing his LSU opener for a third consecutive year.

There will be minor dips along the way but his teams inevitably get better with as the season wears on.

Too bad there can’t be a pipe wrench up for grabs. Or even a good rivalry taunt.

A team that keeps a straight face winning “The Boot” can’t be choosy about trophy games.

—

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