Perspective Piece
Florida vs. LSU, Oct. 15---college football---

By Matthew Zemek

There’s a very refreshing dimension to this huge battle between the Gators and Tigers this Saturday in Baton Rouge: there will be no more excuses for anyone.---college football---

For Florida, any realistic chances of winning the SEC East are on the line in this game. Yes, it’s fair to say that Urban Meyer should not have been expected to reach Atlanta and the SEC title game in year one of a very complex transition process—involving the tutelage of Chris Leak, a natural dropback passer, in a spread-option offense designed more for a running quarterback—but Meyer is the “it” coach in college football, so the expectations of a Gator fan base starved for a return to SEC supremacy are still very high and very intense. Those expectations ride on the outcome of this game, which needs to be captured by Florida if the Cocktail Party is to mean anything (anything beyond the always-existing significance of a rivalry game, that is). ---college football---

The reason why the Gators are in such a must-win position entering this contest—at least in terms of the SEC East—is that Meyer’s boys got undressed by Alabama two weeks earlier, in a loss that wasn’t shocking so much as the manner in which the game was lost. The ease and thoroughness with which the Tide smothered the spread option sent a loud alarm signal to Meyer while giving the rest of the SEC confidence that this much-discussed offense won’t cut it in America’s most cutthroat conference. After a sloppy game against Mississippi State, this LSU tilt represents—for Meyer and his offense—the ultimate opportunity to prove the worth of the spread option.---college football---

Every offense—upon installation and implementation—will struggle at some point. The lack of execution, the absence of a natural crispness and rhythm, and the struggle for players to feel comfortable all factor into the growing pains of a complex new system. Throw in the presence of stacked, speedy defenses, and you have a recipe for the kind of indecent exposure Florida’s offense suffered in Tuscaloosa.---college football---
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A meeting with an LSU defense that is tremendously quick gives Florida a chance to get it right, in a put-up-or-shut-up (at least for 2005, anyway) moment of considerable drama and significance. The college football world didn’t know Alabama had fully returned to prominence before the Tide took the field against the Gators nearly two weeks ago. LSU, on the other hand, has resided in the upper echelon of college football powers over the past four seasons. So as Florida takes the field in Tiger Stadium, there’s very little mystery about the stakes involved for the spread option: it will either address the weaknesses Alabama revealed to the nation, or it will get swarmed and swamped yet again by another fast defense. Mind you, this won’t be a final verdict on the system itself and its long-term viability in the SEC, but this most certainly will be a verdict on the spread option in terms of Chris Leak’s ability to run it. ---college football---

In other words, no more excuses for Florida’s offense. It will either rise to meet the moment or be exposed a second time. And you know what they say about the difference between one and two: the first time’s an accident, the second time’s a trend.---college football---

But on the matter of excuses, they’re also gone for LSU football and head coach Les Miles.---college football---

When the Tigers lost to Tennessee, the Bayou Bengals faced a situation that, on every conceivable level, simply could not lend itself to legitimate, normal football analysis.---college football---
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In the week after Hurricane Katrina, LSU players lost an average of SEVEN POUNDS. Any rhythms, any normal preparation routines, any natural processes of football evolution and development within a team context, basically went out the window for the Tigers in September. The huge first-half emotions of the Tennessee game, combined with an emotionally exhausted crowd and severe limitations on the players’ conditioning, all helped create the physical and mental fatigue, the cramping and sluggishness, that contributed to the Vols’ late comeback in Baton Rouge (that, and a heroic Rick Clausen). In the wake of such a bizarre game played under such evidently weird circumstances, Les Miles deserved precious little criticism for his handling of the game. Sure, the Tigers’ first-year head coach made mistakes, but no coach could have been able to fully account for the cramping and the emotional rollercoasters that played a very real part in the avalanche that buried his team against Tennessee. Much of the situation was Miles outside Les’ control.---college football---
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So with the Katrina-influenced past serving as prelude, we now arrive at the point in the 2005 season where LSU has been able to settle into reasonably normal football routines. The Tigers are regularly playing on Saturdays in games that are (gasp!) not being suspended, postponed or rescheduled in terms of days or time slots. Conditioning routines are being established, and the week-to-week focus of LSU players has been able to increasingly shift back to football... maybe not totally, but a lot more than what September enabled the Tiger players to do, up and down their roster.---college football---
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This Florida game—as the biggest contest since the Tennessee loss—represents the first authentic test of Les Miles’ coaching quality. The circumstances, as they pertain to football, are now appreciably normal, meaning that any mistakes Miles makes deserve to be subjected to withering scrutiny. The Tennessee aftermath demanded that Miles get a free pass, but now, the season truly begins for LSU’s coach. Unlike the Tennessee game, Miles will merit criticism if his team’s bugaboos persist: if the Tigers continue to turn the ball over; if there are game management issues at the end of halves; if fitness becomes an issue in the fourth quarter; and if the Tigers sit on and blow an early lead, the lines of angry Tiger fans will justifiably be Miles long. Why? Because a loss in this game means that LSU could beat Auburn the following week and yet still sit behind their rivals from Alabama, who would be able to take home the SEC West by winning the Iron Bowl against the Crimson Tide in late November. LSU needs this game for the West just as much as Florida needs this one for the East.---college football---
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The margin of error is gone. So are the excuses. One offense is on the firing line, pitted against a coach whose honeymoon period deserved to last through the Katrina September, but which has now ended as well.
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Gators. Tigers. One will be exposed, the other redeemed.
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How refreshing indeed.---college football---
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