Hot Boudin, Cold Cous-Cous...

Around the Bowl and Down the Hole... You Know the Rest: Week 10:

This weekend, we finally get one of 'those games' in Tigertown-- an opponent not scraping the bottom of the barrell as a whole, but not necessarily peaking as a top-ten team either. In fact, this is the first 'medium' game of the season for LSU, and it's week ten. Unbelievable.

Which makes me all the more worried. I could just spout out memorable wins and losses against the Tide over the years, pace a few Googled John Parker Wilson and Mike Shula photos, predict a score, and call it a blog. Actually, that's what I'll do; the formula worked last week and I'm not about to change it.

Come on, Mike, win just enough games to stay at 'Bama. Just not this one.

The amount of 'Bama hatred for a given LSU fan is a pure function of age alone. Anyone older than me probably owns three different 'Beat 'Bama!' buttons from three decades. Anyone older than me by twenty years or more has become so embittered, jaded, and apoplectic from season upon season of stomach-punch losses, most of which occurred at home. In fact, I now suspect that the 1998 Alabama game in Baton Rouge chopped about fifteen years from the average male life expectancy in Louisiana. And, according to my dad, there were about six or seven of those games in the '70s and '80s.

Um, yeah. This gives you an idea.

Really, it's the Gulf Coast version of Yankees/Red Sox. When we shocked the league and won the conference title in 2001, Alabama headed to Baton Rouge in 2002 and embarrassed us to the tune of 30-0. It could have easily been 70-0. And this was the Cotton Bowl LSU team in Saban's third year, not some sleepwalking Curley Hallman squad. Silly LSU, thinking they can become a Western Division power. The Tide do not lose in Baton Rouge, even when we're on a three-year probation.

Nothing was worse than seeing a freshman named Su. Alexander make his debut in 1996.

So for this age reason, I'm not the best one to write a hate-riddled Alabama preview. Auburn is my personal 'Bama, and it doesn't look like that will change anytime soon. But, my, how the tide has turned in this divisional rivalry; LSU has won the last three and four of the past five. And when you consider the past ten years, LSU has only lost in Tuscaloosa once, in 1999, part of Gerry Dinardo's Farewell Tour. But we're playing in Baton Rouge, where the Tide either play above their abilities, downright destroy us, or (usually) both. We've only beaten Alabama in Baton Rouge twice in the last 37 years. Read that sentence again.

But this isn't your Alabama team of the past three decades. Mike Shula, a perplexing head coach decision from the very beginning, has received alumni pressure for not being able to spark offense or match wits with almost any SEC coach. The sooner Alabama realizes they're not great enough to promote from within-- big tradition in Tuscaloosa, you know, the coach has to have some kind of Alabama connection, unless you're Mike Price-- the sooner they return to the top of the Western Division. Which, at the very least, is where Tide fans think they belong.

I want to party with Mike Price. It's comforting to know there are actually strippers named Destiny.

Last season, the senior leadership aligned well enough to produce an 8-0 start. One Sports Illustrated cover appearance later, LSU quelled any national title dreams by winning 16-13 in overtime at Bryant Denny Stadium. Is it just me, or does every SEC stadium have the same name? With many of those senior leaders moving on to the NFL, the Tide are led by first-year starter John Parker Wilson, probably the most perfect name possible for a 'Bama quarterback. The defense, in a rather transitional season, is still the fourteenth-ranked defense in the country.

Posers. Can't tell whether this is funny, lame, depressing, delightful, or all of the above.

What worries me most about Alabama is their tendency to play well in big games on the road. Their losing efforts at Florida and Tennessee were much closer than the score indicates. Sure, they'll lose to Mississippi States now and then, but they'll definitely show up to the LSU and Auburn games. With Mike Shula feeling a Dubose-like level of heat, an upset in Baton Rouge couldn't be more well-timed. Shit.

The prediction: LSU 27 Alabama 10.

- P.T.