Know one knows anything.

And if you don’t grasp how much that grinds on Nick Saban, you haven’t been paying too much attention over the last decade and change.

Last week at this time, Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide were beginning game-week preparations to play LSU. The annual grudge match had special significance after the Tiger downed Alabama at Bryant-Denny Stadium en route to the national championship, with Ed Orgeron growling and grunting and yaw-yaw-yawing his way through it all.

Last week at this time, it was LSU week.

Now? Heck, we aren’t even totally sure it is Kentucky week.

It would be easy to blame LSU for all this. After all, it was the Tigers who were unable to control the spread of COVID-19 through their program last week — leading to a postponement/cancellation/whatever of Saturday night’s game at Death Valley. But as the last 8 months of all of our lives have taught us, even really good social distancing and masking and good hygiene still can’t stop coronavirus.

So not only did Alabama get an extra week off (its first such in-season break since 1978), the Tide’s road to Atlanta and the SEC Championship Game suddenly became even more opaque. The Tide practiced Monday through Thursday last week, and practiced again Saturday instead of playing a game — that work focusing on Kentucky, the presumptive opponent next week at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

“We’re not really doing anything any different than we normally would, nor do we want the players to do anything different than they normally would,” Saban said last Thursday night.

But as SEC commissioner Greg Sankey pointed out Saturday night, tomorrow isn’t exactly a promise to anyone. And for the entire conference, that equals not quite knowing at this moment who you might play next.

“We have let our programs know that as we go later on in the season, there will be some reshuffling of games as originally planned to accommodate games that have been postponed, including Alabama vs. LSU,” Sankey said during a live interview with CBS. “We can schedule all the games, so the comfort level is high there. The discomfort has always been what happens to the environment around the game — specifically related to COVID-19.”

Wait, what? Taking Sankey at face value, that means the conference could theoretically shuffle a whole lot of schedules for a whole lot of teams in for a 2-fold mission.

1. Try to make each program whole with an entire season’s worth of games.

2. Try to ensure viable division champions for a viable SEC Championship Game.

Getting there will certainly be an exercise in creative scheduling — even if no more games need to be postponed/canceled/whatever due to COVID-19.

“We can’t control what other people do. We can’t control the schedule. We can control what we do. So whoever we play, whenever we play, we’re gonna be ready to go,” Saban said. “We’re trying to keep the players in a rhythm and a routine that won’t hurt us too bad that we didn’t play for a couple weeks. We’re looking forward to having the opportunity to play and hope that opportunity will come this week coming up

“We’ve had an opportunity to practice against everybody, to some degree, that we’re going to play to finish the season. In doing that, if our schedule got changed around for some reason, we’d probably be pretty nimble in being able to switch around what we need to do to get our team ready.”

While Saban is maintaining — at least outwardly — an upbeat profile in the face of what has already been an unprecedented 2020 season, he also knows that the danger of what happened to LSU last week could easily hit his program at any moment.

“Our guys have been pretty good about it,” Saban said about the Tide adopting various protocols to keep each other safe. “The thing I tried to emphasize to the players today is people are having issues because they’re getting complacent and relaxing about social distancing and taking care of their personal bubble. That’s where all these things have an issue.

“The thing that could upset our season, as much as any opponent that we play, is if we don’t pay attention to detail and we get lax and relaxed about what you have to do to stay safe in your personal bubble. Because if you don’t do that, you get a spread on our team, that’s going to affect our chances to be successful in the future. Our guys have been really good about handling those situations and we just want to keep it that way moving forward.”

Saban’s advice is so alarmingly simple, so direct, that you could almost wonder aloud why he hasn’t been tapped for a PSA campaign targeting those in society who can’t seem to get the message about coronavirus. And his attitude toward the unprecedented uncertainty that remains in the quest to get to the end of the 2020 college football season is remarkable, in that lesser souls could be grousing and griping about having to adjust such a gigantic machine like Alabama football on a dime.

But here we are, being surprised at every turn. Is this Kentucky week? We guess so … maybe? Is it LSU week? We don’t think so.

No one knows anything.