Gators have Tigers on a leash
HOOVER, Ala. — Officially, they are known as the Louisiana State Tigers, but to the Florida Gators they might as well be the passive, purring Pussycats of LSU (Little Sisters University).
Ever since the school’s buffoonish athletics director Joe Alleva opened his mouth and tried to shame UF into playing a football game while Category 4 Hurricane Matthew was bearing down on our state last October, the Gators have owned the Pussycats in nearly every athletic endeavor you can name.
The dominance began with the Gators’ dramatic goal-line stand in November to beat heavily favored LSU in the Pussycat Pavilion in Baton Rouge to clinch the SEC East. It ended a couple of weeks ago with a College World Series sweep of LSU’s storied baseball team in Omaha.
In between, the Gators blew out the Pussycats 106-71 in men’s basketball, shut out the Pussycats 3-0 in women’s soccer, skunked the Pussycats in men’s and women’s tennis and swept both volleyball meetings 3-0. In all, the Gat-
ors beat the Pussycats in head-to-head competition in 23 of 31 sporting events after Hurricane Matthew.
Perhaps this programwide dominance is why the Gators announced last week that they have scheduled LSU for homecoming on Oct. 7 — UF’s earliest homecoming game in school history. Florida’s company line is that the university’s faculty senate — and not the athletic department — decides when homecoming will be, but who knows what goes on behind closed doors? No word yet on whether Les Miles will serve as the honorary grand marshal of the homecoming parade.
“People are going to do what they’re going to do,” new LSU coach Ed Orgeron said at SEC Media Days on Monday. “… We’re going to be ready to play regardless of what it is.”
Added LSU senior wide receiver D.J. Chark: “I’ve
never been scheduled for somebody’s homecoming. Being scheduled for their homecoming game says a lot, but at the end of the day, it’s just football. It’s just a rivalry.”
It’s a rivalry that became unnecessarily ugly and bitter last year when Alleva started sounding like Harvey Updyke or some of the other deranged fans on collegefootball message boards.
Alleva suggested the Gators were running scared when they canceled the game with LSU and even wrote emails to his staff claiming Florida was trying to duck the Tigers in order to give themselves a better chance of winning the SEC East.
Florida eventually yielded to Alleva’s demands and moved what would have been a home game to Baton Rouge later in the season. After the Gators ended up winning that game 16-10 and clinching a division title, UF coach Jim McElwain blasted Alleva.
“Can you believe that?” McElwain said. “It just shocks me that somebody would question the Gators. The way I look at it, they [LSU] got what they deserved. And it should have been worse.”
McElwain stuck the needle in even further by suggesting Tiger Stadium had been transformed into The Swamp West: “This was supposed to be a home game for us, so we’re now 6-0 in the Swamp this year,” he said. “That’s pretty cool.”
Amazingly, Alleva might be the only AD in college football history to provide the motivation and inspiration to galvanize an entire opposing athletic program and fan base against his own team.
Not only that, but because he dug in his heels last season and wouldn’t play the game in Gainesville, LSU now has to travel to the Swamp this season — and next season.
In other words, his entire pathetic diatribe in the face of a potentially devastating natural disaster backfired. But, then again, we shouldn’t be surprised.
Alleva is the same AD who totally butchered the lacrosse scandal when he was the AD at Duke. He’s the same AD who fired Miles — one of the most successful coaches in LSU history — only four games into last season with the idea that he could lure FSU’s Jimbo Fisher or Houston’s Tom Herman to Baton Rouge.
Instead, he ended up with Orgeron, whose only other non-interim head-coaching stint netted a 3-21 SEC record during three seasons at Ole Miss.
Say it ain’t so, Joe. Actually, I’m afraid it is so, Joe.
You’ve turned the Tigers into Pussycats.
And in the process, you’ve become an even bigger bag of wind than Hurricane Matthew.