It’s one of the newest parts of LSU football practice.It’s called the Big Cat drill, and it has players pumped up.The drill is a version of a pee-wee football drill called Oklahoma, and it involves an offensive player and a defensive player hitting each other one-on-one. On the snap of the ball, the players try to drive each other out of the designated area.”The Big Cat drill is the drill you get to go in there and be in front of your teammates,” said LSU junior running back Stevan Ridley. “Nobody can hide. When you can start a practice off with some competition like that and get the juices flowing, it makes it easy to play physical the rest of the day.”LSU coach Les Miles said everyone will get a chance to do the drill during the season, including kickers, and he said he is the judge of who wins each time.”It’s when you lock up, pad under pad. It’s strength and brute force,” Miles said. “If I take your body back, I won. If you take my body back, you won.”Miles said he came up with the drill to see which players exhibit the most competitive fire.”It allows the competitive view of a physical interaction,” Miles said. “If they can step in that drill and fare well, they can be a dominant, physical football team.”Sophomore wide receiver Russell Shepard said he likes the drill because it helps resurrect the attitude the team demonstrated in winning the national championship in the 2007 season.”That style and drill itself brings us back to the days when [former LSU running back Jacob] Hester was running over [former Florida safety] Major Wright in the Florida game,” Shepard said. “In the 2008 and 2009 seasons we kind of got away from that. It brings a whole different mentality to the team.”Ridley said the Big Cat drill is “all about staying low.””In football the low man wins,” Ridley said. “It’s all about leverage.  When you get up under a guy, the weight really becomes a non-factor.”Junior linebacker Ryan Baker said the Big Cat drill adds to the physicality the Tigers already play with every week in spring practice, and he said it will translate to the regular season.”Everybody is wild about who wins and who loses, and altogether it brings us closer together,” Baker said. “It could bring some enthusiasm and excitement of remembering the times we lined up across each other man-on-man each and every day.”Miles said after LSU’s first scrimmage in full pads March 6 that players executed the drill just as he hoped.”I don’t think I saw a missed tackle,” Miles said. “I saw good, hard runs.”Ridley said the team is excited about the Big Cat drill because it spices up the beginning of each practice.”Instead of going through and doing the same thing every day, we get to go out there and hit each other,” Ridley said. “That’s what you do as a football player. It’s been a lot of fun.”- – – -Contact Rachel Whittaker at [email protected]