The LSU - Alabama Game: After The Dust Has Settled

With a week off for both teams before THE GAME, Louisiana sports journalists had a field day promoting the game and especially LSU's chances of beating Alabama this time around.  The usual hype took center stage in place of objectivity and the hype ended up being larger than the game itself.  Sports journalists and those commenting on behalf of LSU completely ignored LSU's previous games against Alabama with Orgeron and Ensminger at the controls and the teams dismal offensive play calling and game plan.

But now, this year and this LSU team was a different story they said.  They were going to spread Alabama's defense, be aggressive and take the game to Alabama.  Yeah Right.  It was pure hype as LSU has not played an aggressive offense against Alabama since the Miles/Orgeron era began.  And once again LSU was out coached, out played and Alabama is so far ahead in executing the fundamentals of the game its like college playing against a high school team.  Every offensive player on Alabama's team was a blocker and LSU's defense did not know how to shed those blocks.  And Alabama used mostly stand up blocking.

The shame of it all after more than 12 plus years at LSU, Miles and Orgeron have learned nothing about coaching against Alabama and Nick Saban.  It has always puzzled this writer why some coaches never seem to learn how to better themselves by adopting the successful teachings of other successful coaches.  That leads to the answer as to why there are so few top coaches in college football.  The same can be said of the NFL.

This writer is not a fan of Saban because he was untruthful as to why he left LSU.  Saban planted the seed when LSU hired him that he may want to return to the NFL one day.  That was his cover and LSU accepted it.  But Saban wanted out at LSU for reasons never made public and he used the NFL trump card for his exit at LSU.  After three years at Miami, Saban found what he was looking for, head coach at Alabama.  Saban knew what the NFL was all about because he coached in the NFL before going to Miami and he knew he could never control professional players like he could college players.

As an LSU fan for over 50 years, this writer still believes LSU football should have a proven winning head coach and an offensive co-ordinator who is in tune with the changes of the sport.  This writer was stunned when sports journalists never picked up on Les Miles statement some time after he was fired when he said, "he would now spend time learning about the changes taking place in football."  He should have done that while he was still coaching and preparing his LSU teams.  That was a remarkable statement.

Will the Alabama loss be a game that turns things around in a positive way for LSU or will it be the game that gave a clue to the future of head coach Orgeron?  Time will tell.


This commentary was written by Joe Lorio