Alabama football: LSU can't avoid the whipping the SEC rescheduled for them now
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’.
Careful what you wish for gumps…
TJ Touchdown and dem tigers will be ready.
We aint backin down.
Which is exactly why this is always such a good game. “It aint the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog.”
Man…..that was a lot of unabashed homer trash talking. If Bama loses Wasson needs to retire.
Nothing gets by you.
This article was so terrible that I couldn’t finish it.
It was really bad LSUMC.
Agreed, LSUMC.
Typical Gump writer. Now I know where their fans get it. In his self-perpetuated ignorance, he doesn’t realize LSU wanted to play Bama, and their pushing to play them down the road motivated all this reshuffling of the schedule by the SEC. But he won’t say it, doesn’t even want to know it, because it doesn’t fit his narrative. In case you don’t know what that is, it’s to suck up yo Bama. Maybe he wants a job there at the ole alma mater.
Why so serious?
I guess I got offended for my team.
What a moron. LSU needs this game. We’re building a team to kick ass in the future. They need the work.
Harsh…
Goes to show SDS will put out anything to get clicks.
Huh. Comments are open on this thread for some strange reason.
I guess neither LSU or Alabama is putting a woman on the field to potentially stop a kick return.
My god SDS, you’ve got to do better than to allow this kind of pointless garbage to be published. Can’t say this is the biggest heap of homer trash to be allowed through, but it’s close.
Please, publish something worth publishing or not at all, and someone please tell Wasson to stop jerking it to a picture of Saban while writing articles, it’s embarrassing!
I thought it was one of the more entertaining columns on SDS in quite a while.
What do you want instead, even more columns about Kyle Pitts?
I want credible and relevant sports journalism, not this homer trash that seems to be a problem on SDS. But I guess when 3rd rate conspiracy tabloids won’t even take you serious you have to go somewhere. That’s where SDS comes in!
After all, the only pre-requisite for being a journalist on SDS is the ability to raw dog a bottle of Texas Pete with a smile on your face.
Sorry, thought I clicked on SDS, not TideFans. Oops.
David Wasson had a major crush on Tua while the QB at Bama. He repeatedly called him the “sweet Hawaiian prince”. It was rather odd. I’ll bet he the biggest fan of the Dolphins watching his Tu Tu.
Oh wow. I guess there’s some unresolved feelings playing out. I appreciate the context.
I had forgotten about that, but I do remember it now. That was a weird thing to read, especially from a male writer, and over and over again.
Wow. That’s some deep stuff. I guess that helps explain it.
Who wrote this lol
This is an editorial opinion piece (at best) and should be labeled as such.
This stuff is usually reserved for UGA. Haha.
Wow this article sounds like a message board fan. I did learn that Coach O must be the greatest recruiter ever being he apparently stopped recruiting and still ended up with the 5th ranked class last year and currently has the 3rd ranked class this year.
What hs 32 teeth and an I.Q. of 121? A David Wasson family reunion. Garbage writing by a wannabe journalist. Time to go back to your employment recruiter and search for another temp job.
Good Lord, I thought I’d stumbled into some kind of Alabama fansite article. That was appalling.
Oh, and Florida-Tennessee is not a rescheduled game. It was always December 5th.
:)
Did Negan write this?
Stir the sh@* and dream of being Finebaum. I picture you sitting in your trailer in a Roll Tide tee shirt and matching boxers, drinking a natural lite beer for breakfast, writing this on your commodore computer! w
What a hack!
I came back to this article with some more ammunition, but after seeing the fans here have more class than the writer, I’ll let it go. The Bama fans here don’t deserve it.