LSU’s home matchup with Florida Saturday is hotly anticipated – as it is every year. The matchup will likely be tightly contested and has fatal consequences for the loser’s national title ambitions.
Again a top-25 matchup, the Tigers’ surprising juggernaut of an offense will smash into the teeth of Florida’s always formidable defense, ranked No. 2 nationally. The loser will stay alive in its quest for a conference championship, but the BCS Championship is out of its picture.
In college football, every loss is devastating. To minimize missteps, contenders pay hopeless teams to line up like bowling pins for their non-conference slate. Any scheduling disadvantage potentially holds severe consequences.
So it’s not surprising LSU coach Les Miles has become the most vocal opponent to the SEC’s mandate of permanent cross-divisional rivals, even if it wasn’t apparent in his weekly press conference Wednesday.
“I have no idea [about scheduling developments,]” Miles said. “None whatsoever. I’m excited about the opportunity to play Florida, and I’ve given no thought to the scheduling issues.”
But he’s had plenty to say in the past. On teleconferences and at media days, Miles has fervently advocated for the rectifying of what he says are inequalities in SEC scheduling — a stance that is defensible.
While as of late, LSU has had to deal with the Urban Meyer/Will Muschamp succession and His Heisman Holiness Tim Tebow, Alabama capitalized on a revolving door of incompetent coaches at Tennessee.
The imbalance is especially potent this season, with Georgia rotating to the Tigers and Kentucky to Alabama.
“It’s interesting to see how you would compare our schedule with others,” Miles said in April on a coaches’ teleconference. “I wonder if there should be no permanent partners.”
Since Miles joined the Tigers, their series with Florida is even at 4-4, and both teams were ranked in each of those matchups.
Saban and Alabama, on the other hand, flogged Tennessee each of the last six seasons in the “Third Saturday of October” to the tune of 23 points per game. In the only game the Volunteers were ranked, Saban’s first year in Tuscaloosa, an unranked Tide whipped them by one point more than that average.
The permanent rivals have had variable effects on the rest of the West in the league’s era of BCS dominance.
In the “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry,” Cam Newton is the only Auburn quarterback to have beaten Georgia since 2006.
Mississippi State gets to beat on a Kentucky team whose fans forget football exists in anticipation for basketball season.
Ole Miss’s rivalry with Vanderbilt has perennially been as competitive as the Rebel Black Bears have been inconsequential.
Arkansas had South Carolina’s number before Johnny Football and a quickly developing Texas A&M snatched the Gamecocks, and was left with Missouri.
So it’s not unfair to interpret LSU’s point of contention of having stemmed solely from Alabama’s dominance of Tennessee.
Miles and LSU athletic director Joe Alleva have gained
support in the form of South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier, who in June, according to ESPN’s Chris Low, noted that the combined record of 2012 SEC Championship contenders Alabama and Georgia’s cross-divisonal opponents was 6-26.
Alleva said on Matt Moscona’s radio show in June that he recruited Spurrier to the cause, and that he was encouraged by a promise at this year’s annual SEC meetings to study the matter.
But what’s holding the league back from making a move? Its insistence on keeping up storied, century-old rivalries, which SEC commissioner Mike Slive has said will be an important consideration when mulling a permanent solution to the “bridge” schedules established in 2012 to accommodate the two new teams. The current format runs through 2015.
“There’s not going to be [a format], I think, that’s absolutely perfect where everyone will be completely happy,” said Slive last week, according to AL.com. “For me, my hope is to have the schedule that’s in the long-term best interests of the conference.”
The SEC powers that be will have to decide whether tradition trumps parity in a time during which the conference is growing and changing at an unprecedented rate, with a dedicated cable network set to launch next year.
Until then, Miles will keep the Tigers’ heads down. He wasn’t spouting the company line Wednesday; he may know better than anyone that there’s nothing he can do but play the Florida game, no matter how unfair he perceives it to be.
Alex Cassara is a 22-year-old mass communication senior from
New Orleans.