Well, this is beginning to feel more like a game week.
Obviously, Hurricane Isaac was more on everyone’s mind during last week’s game preparations and well it should have been. Memories of the destruction, like Katrina and Gustav, is very hard to watch. I was very fortunate. Others weren’t and those are the ones who need our support at this time.
In the end, there was a football game played last weekend in Tiger Stadium and for Coach Les Miles and the Tigers that was a good thing. The Coach didn’t want to play Sunday or Monday if the circumstances would allow a Saturday Night in Death Valley.
So it was a win-win for most. The football team got its game when it wanted. The fans saw a win over North Texas. The test run of the new meat smokers and grills in the tailgating lots took place as planned, and for many the multiple hours of football was a much needed diversion from the weight of the world.
But now game week is getting to that full-blown state. ESPN will have all their trucks arriving in the early morning hours of Friday. SkyCam will soon be spinning around the stadium (try not to drop it boys, like that bowl game last year!). Even the tailgaters were out apparently overnight Wednesday setting up tent frames as plenty were up along Nicholson Drive when I came to work on Thursday morning.
The Washington Huskies are coming to town. Now apparently there was a tiger at Washington’s practice earlier in the week. That’s right Steve Sarkisian put a 300-pound Bengal Tiger from Oregon (Oregon really?) out there for his players to see. Wonder how the Oregon native tiger and our Indiana-born Mike VI would get along?
Seattle Times reporter Bob Condotta wondered if the Tiger at Washington’s practice would start a trend and would Sarkisian bring more opponent mascots to practice. He tweeted (while hopefully not too close to the Tiger): “I’m sort of scared for when they play the Nevada Wolfpack next year.”
Let me just say for the record that to the best of my knowledge Coach Miles did not bring a live Husky to an LSU practice. It would make a good story, but I’m not starting that one.
On other matters, I’ve heard people this week tell me that they didn’t think we were as good as they hoped. Again, I would go to the game week situation with the storm, playing the first game and probably too many of you watching what was happening with the score at that big stadium in Arlington.
There is that feeling that you always make big improvements from game one to game two. Is it proven fact? Is it a myth?
In my long-ago horse racing days, you saw it in race horses making second starts after a long layoff. A maiden horse (kind of like a freshman in football) doesn’t quite know all the ins and outs of winning the first time out, but begins to figure it out after a couple of tries and improves in everything he or she does.
Same can be said of second game starts. But there appears to be a caveat to the thought if you believe the words of one SEC coach at his post-practice press conference on Wednesday.
The object lesson to the media appeared to be that you can’t improve from the first game to the second game if you don’t have a good week of practice before the second game and apparently said team wasn’t having the week of practice that was up to standards. So, in terms much less simple than this, he explained to the media the hows and whys and wherefores of improving each and every day and how you don’t improve if you don’t practice well all the time.
But of course that then means if you practice well, you should improve well, shouldn’t it? I think the LSU Tigers are practicing well and we should see an improved LSU team this Saturday. But just for the record, there were some things that looked pretty good to me.
Now that we have thoroughly researched the subject of second game improvement, now back to something important:
What’s cooking on your grill this Saturday prior to the game? Have a great Saturday at Tiger Stadium. Geaux Tigers!!!