Good luck getting out of this one, Ed Orgeron. 

Unlike the COVID-postponed cluster a couple of weeks ago, the Southeastern Conference swiftly checked Orgeron and LSU off the “nice” list Friday by rescheduling the defending national champs against the future national champs next week. 

With one stroke of commissioner Greg Sankey’s pen, Arkansas was off Alabama’s Dec. 5 appointment book (you’re welcome, Hogs …) and replaced them with the one team the Crimson Tide might have been looking forward to hanging half-a-hundred on even more than Auburn. 

Yes, we went there.

LSU-Alabama has perennially been a “rivalry game,” in the same milieu as Tennessee and Mississippi State. Until last year, that is, when Ed O and his crew got a little too mouthy at Bryant-Denny Stadium after beating the Tide en route to the CFP title. 

Here’s the problem with that: When you’re in the same division, well, you gotta play Alabama every year. And that means you gotta reload every year to play the full 60 against an Alabama team that has yet to exhaust the ability to teach one-and-done squads valuable lessons. 

LSU apparently missed that portion of “Championship Football 101,” as the Tigers seemingly went all-in on 2019 without regard for what could happen in 2020. The result is nothing short of, well, embarrassing in Red Stick. Heading into this weekend’s tilts, LSU is a laugh-out-loud 3-3 and faces a road test as a 14.5-point underdog at No. 5 Texas A&M. 

Look, we’re all for having a good time around these parts. But LSU apparently forgot that they’d been to the national championship party 3 times before and partied so hard last year that recruiting, offseason preparation or pretty much anything resembling work toward the 2020 season went up in a cloud of Joe Burrow cigar smoke. 

Meanwhile, Alabama — and the rest of the conference, for that matter — wasn’t standing pat. The Crimson Tide remember every second of last season’s 46-41 home loss just as painfully as the 48-45 loss to Auburn, and have wanted to return the favor in spades in Death Valley. 

A couple of weeks ago, however, it didn’t look like that was in the cards. LSU conveniently couldn’t get its COVID-19 situation together the exact week the best team in the country was set to endure the smell of corndogs, and waved off the impending Saturday Night Slaughter that was bound to happen. 

But whatever moral victory obtained by not getting their collective rear ends handed to them that weekend was written in invisible ink almost right away. At the exact moment toe was to meet leather at Tiger Stadium, Sankey was on CBS espousing that the conference would work hard to rearrange things to get key conference games just like Alabama-LSU back online. 

Something tells us the folks in Fayetteville have precisely zero issues with not welcoming Alabama into Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium in favor of the Crimson Tide pointing the jet farther south to beat on LSU until they quit. Yeah, Arkansas probably ends up catching their beating a week later on Dec. 12 … but as anyone who has had a schoolyard fight lined up for after class will tell you, any delay is a good delay. 

“The cooperation and flexibility of our coaches, athletics directors and campus leaders along with the dedication of our student-athletes now provides the opportunity to reach this point in the season with the ability for each SEC team to play ten football games in 2020,” Sankey said in a release. “We knew before the season there would be interruptions and scheduling challenges related to COVID-19 and we will continue to manage the remaining weeks of the football schedule to allow for as many games to be played as possible, with a continuing focus on determining an SEC champion.”

The other rescheduled SEC games for Dec. 5:

  • Arkansas at Missouri (rescheduled from Nov. 28)
  • Florida at Tennessee
  • South Carolina at Kentucky
  • Texas A&M at Auburn
  • Vanderbilt at Georgia

Another juicy facet of all this is that Alabama coach Nick Saban likely will be coming out of COVID protocol just in time for a trip to Baton Rouge. If coaching against Saban under normal circumstances isn’t a big enough chore, imagine coaching against him when he missed his first game in 35 years and you might have celebrated a wee bit too strenuously on his home turf?

So Saturday night in Death Valley is back on, provided there isn’t a sudden influx of bubonic plague or locusts in Red Stick, and Alabama can settle all family business within a 7-day period. Stuffing a gigantic lump of coal down Orgeron’s mush seven days after overcoming Auburn/the officials/insane voodoo luck is enough to make even the most cynical Crimson Tide fans bleat sounds of pure joy. 

To those who might need a translator for what the sounds actually mean, we are here for you. How does Friday’s announcement resonate with Alabama Nation?

We comin’.