LSU football coach Les Miles delivered quite an assessment about his interaction with new athletic director Joe Alleva during three weeks of hurricanes and football uncertainty.”I promise you, the storm was much more difficult to deal with than the new athletic director,” Miles said Monday with a smirk.Smooth sailing is not the choice of words Alleva would use to describe his first football season at LSU.Consider the obstacles that have been presented: approaching Hurricane Gustav, a 10 a.m. game in Tiger Stadium, damage to facilities, the Troy game postponement and a near disruption from Hurricane Ike.”I feel like I should have a degree in meteorology,” Alleva said. Alleva, who replaced Skip Bertman on July 1, frequently expressed his excitement during the summer about the upcoming nights in Tiger Stadium. But with Gustav brewing in the Gulf of Mexico just days before the Appalachian State game, a change of plans was necessary. He attended three meetings with Gov. Bobby Jindal to discuss possible options for adjusting the scheduled 4 p.m. start.”He wanted us to play the game,” Alleva said. “We had to do what was best for the state. His staff thought — and I agreed — that it was best we play at 10 [o’clock] in the morning to avoid traffic jams from people trying to evacuate. I totally understand the rationale.”Chancellor Michael Martin, also a new hire, said he observed Alleva’s “resoluteness yet willingness to adapt” in meetings with Jindal.”Joe took a constructive, ‘How can we make this work’ approach,” Martin said. “A different style and a different approach might have failed.”Alleva spent Labor Day hunkered down in his Southgate apartment, frequently peering out his window to observe Gustav’s wrath.The next day he reported to campus to tour the damage. Tiger Stadium was his first stop, where he observed significantly damaged awnings and seats.The Tigers were scheduled to play Troy four days later.”My first thought was, ‘Can we get the stadium ready?'” he said. “We didn’t know if the scoreboard had lights because we couldn’t turn the power on.”Ultimately, the community  damage and disruptions were too much to overcome a scheduled Saturday night in Tiger Stadium.”That was a time of some frustration and angst for both of us,” Martin said. “We needed to make decisions with information that wasn’t complete. But there was never any temper from Joe. I told him if there was any fallout, I could take the heat for moving the game.”Alleva said Miles was supportive, despite understandable frustration because of the game’s postponement.”He has a really good view as a football coach about his role and how it ties into the whole state,” he said. “Of course he wanted to play. I wanted to play. Players wanted to play. But we just couldn’t play it. It wasn’t right to play.”The hurricane experience was not the first high-pressure test for Alleva, who left his post at Duke to take the LSU position. He weathered a different sort of storm — the aftermath from the Duke lacrosse team’s scandal involving sexual allegations.Alleva said he did not panic when he saw Ike gathering strength in the Gulf of Mexico. Rather, he made an alternate plan to move the game to Atlanta if Ike took a turn for Louisiana. Postponing the game was not an option because of schedule complications and the need to prepare for Auburn. If the move to Atlanta had gone forward, Alleva estimates his department would have suffered a “tremendous loss” of nearly $3 million.Ike took a turn to Texas, and the game remained at home. But nerves still remained high as winds rolled in just 24 hours before the scheduled start.”The worst night of sleep was Friday night before North Texas because the storm was blowing so hard,” he said. “I was so afraid that the power was going to go off, and you can’t play a night game with no power.”But the power stayed on, and Alleva finally experienced his first Saturday night in Tiger Stadium.”We made it through and got it kicked off,” he said. “That was really a great feeling.”Alleva said three weeks of uncertainty brought his staff closer, one positive from the hardship.He talked to Miles frequently on the phone and considers Martin a close friend rather than just a colleague.”Maybe in the end, it was good for us to be together as the new kids on the block during all of this,” Martin said. “We joked around and said, ‘Did they mention hurricanes on the job description when you applied?'”- – – – Contact Amy Brittain at [email protected]