LSU could learn from McNeese

Published 7:01 am Sunday, April 9, 2017

Ed Orgeron was on hand for McNeese’s Blue-Gold spring game strictly in a paternal role as proud B?B? of his two Cowboy sons, Parker and Cody.

Hopefully, however, the LSU head coach was taking notes.

Granted, it was way down on the to-do list when he got the LSU gig full-time, but among other things, Flagship U. has never been able to solve the riddle of the spring football game.

We don’t know what Orgeron has in mind for the Tigers when they attempt intrasquad football two weeks hence.

It will be his first. But unless there’s a reversal of 50 years of LSU history, it will be unwatchable.

So give McNeese credit.

Not here to tell you that the Cowboys’ Saturday afternoon game was a thing of gridiron artistry or edge-of-your-seat suspense.

Mostly, it showed off the Cowboys’ punting skills.

But at times it did, in fact, resemble football.

At the least, it seemed like football.

After a sluggish start, it even offered entertainment once the offenses decided the join the fun in the second half.

That’s pretty predictable. When the offensive lines are split up and the defense knows most of the offense’s favorite plays, it tends to give them an advantage.

It’s still an upgrade from the usual spring fare. It’s April. You take what you can get.

And spring games aren’t going away.

They are obligatory, apparently, with long histories, especially in the South.

But it’s a tough nut to crack

The SEC Network, for instance, on Saturday tortured its viewers with three spring games, and every SEC school will have its TV date whether it wants it or not.

Oh, there’s football stuff going on. That’s what they insist anyhow. But it’s the technical, lab-rat stuff that only the finely tuned eyes of well-experienced coaches can discern, and only then after hours and hours of film study, which is far too tedious for the average fan.

There’s a fair amount of “teaching” going on (or so I’m told), and if you remember nothing else from your college days you know how utterly boring that can be.

It’s not fit for layman fans’ eyes.

Scattered outposts seem to make a big spectacle of it, mainly at Alabama, where fans apparently are afraid that Nick Saban is Santa Claus, that he sees and knows all, and it’s both naughty and not nice to miss the Bama spring game.

They pack Bryant-Denny Stadium like lemmings to the sea. It is something of a religious spring pilgrimage.

LSU would have trouble attracting much of a quorum if Elvis turned up for the halftime show.

I always gave LSU fans credit there. Shows they’re knowledgeable football fans and can’t be duped by a charade, even when Saban was the ring master.

Of course, there’s usually not much to see.

I think the “running clock” was invented with LSU spring games in mind.

At least McNeese seemed to be playing a game, with both sides divided as evenly as possible and with some stake in the outcome. I noted a few instances of post-play pushing and shoving.

So somebody cared.

LSU’s has more of a summer camp feel than spring football, in that everybody gets a trophy of some sort. The postgame awards ceremony — if you can call it a game — often seems to last longer than the game.

It was a stroke of genius for Guidry to round up Bobby Keasler and Tommy Tate, the two coaches who led McNeese to Division I-AA championship games, as the affair’s head coaches.

Keasler and Tate don’t do anything in an “honorary” capacity, so maybe it was best that Guidry kept his distance and let them be when their head coaching instincts kicked in.

Keasler’s Gold team, in fact, reprised his “Cardiac Cowboys” favorite ploy of that magical 1997 season with a stirring second-half comeback to snatch a 14-13 victory from a 13-0 deficit.

Maybe one day LSU’s game can liven things up with its two living national championship coaches, Les Miles and Saban, going at it. I would pay cash money to see it.

Guidry’s job, best anybody could tell, was to stand behind the offenses and make sure nobody hit any of his quarterbacks.

Anyway, the Cowboys’ defense, which Guidry now runs as his own coordinator, is way, way ahead of the offense.

Given the travails of last season, that may not be a bad thing.

l

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com