Scooter Hobbs column: Enough already; just get it over with

Published 5:00 am Monday, November 22, 2021

BATON ROUGE — So it turns out that it’s not quite set in granite that Ed Orgeron would keep coaching LSU beyond this week on the odd chance that the Tigers get bowl eligible.

The invite alone would be a tall order since it would require beating Texas A&M Saturday to get to 6-6.

And I didn’t notice any bowl scouts at LSU’s 27-14 win over UL-Monroe ­— they’re generally hard to miss in their Day-Glo sports jackets, wearing their expense accounts on their sleeves.

Perhaps it was past their bedtime.

But the night’s football, or a close facsimile anyway, kept the Tigers’ postseason possibilities alive for another excruciating week.

Orgeron, warming to this lame duck thing, has said from the beginning of the end that he’d like to coach this team as long as possible, presumably for any bowl game.

Saturday he didn’t seem so sure.

“We’ll discuss that,” he said afterwards. “I’ll discuss that with the administration. We’ll see. We haven’t gotten that far. All depends on what happens the next couple weeks. I want to be on the same page as the administration.”

It’s a moot point if LSU doesn’t play any better against the Aggies than it did against the outmanned Warhawks.

But stranger things have happened, even though Orgeron doesn’t see a bowl as the carrot on a stick he expects to excite his troops.

“Our guys are going to be energized,” he said “But I don’t think it’s playing for a bowl, I think it is beating Texas A&M.”

Hard to blame them. About the bowl, that is. They’ve suffered enough this season. So has the fan base.

Oh, the dilemma.

If only there was a way, someway, for the Tigers to beat Texas A&M and still not send this LSU team to a bowl game.

Actually, I checked. Turns out it’s perfectly legal to get a bowl invitation and RSVP with regrets.

What a concept.

Let’s be honest. Nobody seems to be begging to see this LSU season stretch into any unnecessary public viewings. Only a relative handful showed up in Tiger Stadium Saturday with tickets they’d already paid for (or had given to them) on a perfect night for football, even imperfect football.

Besides, the program has a lot else on its mind these days and you never know how December will work into the new coach’s plans.

So why not just congratulate them on this presumed upset of A&M we’ve cooked up, pat them on the back for having a real chance against Alabama and be done with it.

Watching Saturday unfold was ample proof of that. Maybe Exhibit A.

That cupcake the Southeastern Conference schedule traditionally sends for pre-Thanksgiving gorging is a tough sell anyway.

But watching a coach going about his chores as if he’s not worrying about getting fired twice in one season isn’t turning out to be nearly as much fun as it sounded.

Oh, it was fine when Orgeron kept rolling the dice against Alabama when he truly had nothing to lose.

But when you start dialing up goofy fake punts in your own territory late in the second quarter of a game you are dominating and ought to be leading by more than just the scoreboard’s 17-0, you’re just begging for the whole shebang to blow up in your face.

Which is pretty much how the Tigers got covered in a messy 27-14 victory of sorts Saturday night.

Never mind that the intended target of said fake punt, Jontre Kirklin, slipped and fell, leading to an easy ULM interception. It always something.

You don’t give a team like UL-Monroe the notion you have to resort to sleight of hand.

LSU points were going AWOL in mysterious enough ways as it was — two touchdowns wiped off the board by replay review, only one touchdown in four red zone trips.

But the Warhawks, having foiled the plot, suddenly felt like Alabama — scored two plays later, in fact, and the game had a whole new attitude.

Go ahead, fire me!

After that, it was just wondering what in the world the unfettered Coach O would do next to keep an outmanned opponent in the game. And you didn’t have to wait long.

First possession of the second half, another devil-may-care fourth-down gamble in chip-shot field goal range went off like an exploding cigar.

What you going to do? Fire me twice?

They might have to.

Enough is enough.

Be done with this foolishness.

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