SEC Football Q&A: What Should We Make of the LSU-Florida Canceled Game Mess?
The SEC made the wise decision postponing the LSU-Florida game—which was originally scheduled for Oct. 8—due to the threat of Hurricane Matthew, a deadly major hurricane that lashed the East Coast late last week.
After all, the logistics that go into holding a major college football game—which include police, fire, rescue—either could have been needed locally in Gainesville, or in communities closer to the coast where several communities sustained heavy wind and flood damage. What's more, evacuees from coastal areas needed hotel rooms much more than football fans who likely already had reservations.
If other schools and communities felt they could play on, that's fine. Florida/Gainesville didn't based on where its resources could be demanded locally or needed elsewhere, and shouldn't be criticized for placing an emphasis on safety over football.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
That didn't stop the hot-take artists from cooking up some stellar conspiracy theories as to why no makeup date was scheduled, including the silly notion that Florida is scared of LSU.
Are the Gators scared? What will happen with the game? Those questions and more are answered in this week's edition of SEC Q&A.
Let's get the last question out of the way first. No, Florida is not scared of LSU.
Why on earth would any football team in a major conference with a tradition of excellence—including a division title just last year—be scared of another? That's just silly.
In this case, LSU running back Leonard Fournette—a legit Heisman Trophy contender—was probably not going to play, along with starting guard Will Clapp and tight end Foster Moreau. Quarterback Danny Etling would have been making his third career start, against the best pass defense in the SEC, in a hostile environment, with an interim head coach in Ed Orgeron who is still learning how much he can tweak his offense on a team that is 3-2 on the year.
It's not like LSU is some 800-pound gorilla that swings its weight around on any and all comers on a consistent basis. Like Florida—which might have been without starting quarterback Luke Del Rio (even though he practiced last Wednesday), LSU was a flawed team that was banged up at the time.
And some people (check my mentions all weekend long) think that Florida is scared? That's flat-out laughable, and something that head coach Jim McElwain addressed head-on during Monday's press conference, according to Thomas Goldkamp of 247Sports:
"Nineteen deaths, 2.5 million people without power. Families in dire needs. Obviously, they don’t know me, they don’t know the Florida Gators. They don’t know our players. Dodging the game? Wow. Obviously, those people...man. Obviously, I have grown up in Montana and never been through a hurricane, but I think a lot of people around here have and have seen the devastation. How anybody could even think that way is beyond me.
"
As far as the game goes, yes, I do think it'll get played on Nov. 19—when LSU is scheduled to host South Alabama and Florida is set to host Presbyterian. Before LSU fans sprint to the comment section, I'm well aware of what athletics director Joe Alleva said on Monday.
"One thing that we're going to hold very firm on is that we have a home game November 19th, and we're going to have a home game on November 19th," Alleva said in quotes emailed by LSU. "We are going to have a home game on November 19th. We are not going change that situation."
We'll see.
While it is asking LSU and the Baton Rouge area a lot to give up its home game versus South Alabama due to the economic impact one game—even against a lesser opponent—has on the community, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey will urge leaders of both schools do what's in the best interest of the SEC, and will do whatever he can to make up for lost revenue that LSU suffers.
A natural disaster is no reason to throw a little bit of weight around.
Instead of being open to any and all options on the table in the midst of a natural disaster, LSU put a few parameters on it and essentially said "we'll make it work, as long as it happens the weekend it was originally scheduled." Florida dug in as well, stating in its emailed press release on Wednesday, Oct. 5, that the game "will not be moved out of Gainesville."
Both parties should have been more flexible and understanding to the needs and desires of each other, with the understanding that Florida had more detailed knowledge of what resources are used for its football games, where they might be deployed during a storm and where they might need to be staged based on the possibility of Matthew making landfall somewhere along Florida's massive Atlantic coast.
The game needs to be played, and it will be played. While Sankey doesn't necessarily have the ultimate authority to force them to play—he only has the ultimate authority to cancel, according to the bylaws—the two parties aren't going to dig holes so big that they can't dig out.
"The presidents and athletics directors from Florida and LSU agreed on Thursday that the schools and SEC Office would make every effort to find a scheduling solution to their postponed game," Sankey said in an emailed statement. "As I have said, we need to play the game and we need to have people come together to find a way to make that happen. We continue to work with the universities to play this game."
I wouldn't worry about a doomsday scenario in which either LSU or Florida sneaks into the SEC Championship Game based on its conference winning percentage getting boosted due to the absence of one game.
Common sense will prevail.
In the grand scheme of things, we're talking about a football game in relation to a deadly hurricane. What's more important?
This might seem like a silly question since Texas A&M beat Tennessee 45-38 on Saturday afternoon in College Station. But Tennessee did manage to erase a three-score deficit despite turning the ball over seven times against the Aggies, and didn't drop at all in the new AP Top 25.
What the instant classic between the Aggies and Volunteers showed is that the former is a complete football team. Head coach Kevin Sumlin's crew runs the ball well (an SEC-best 274.3 yards per game), has a quarterback in Trevor Knight that doesn't make game-changing mistakes and a defense that, despite giving up 684 yards to the Vols, has been solid this year when defensive end Myles Garrett has been healthy.
But what is Texas A&M's ceiling?
It couldn't put Tennessee away in regulation even after the Vols kept handing the ball over, and allowed a team riddled by injuries to get hot and stay hot in their own building in the second half of the biggest game of the year.
That's concerning, but it's good enough to consider the Aggies the better team.
Why?
Because Tennessee is just so volatile.
When the Vols are clicking, there might not be a better team in the country. The rushing attack is filthy even without injured bruiser Jalen Hurd, as Alvin Kamara and John Kelly showed on Saturday. The defensive front is one of the deepest and best in the league, and the wide receiving corps creates mismatch problems everywhere.
But the floor for the Vols, as proved by the prolonged lulls within games—particularly early in games—is much lower than Texas A&M's.
When things go south, it takes a while for quarterback Joshua Dobbs and Co. to stop the bleeding and turn things around. Because of that, the Vols have spotted three scores to opponents in three consecutive games.
They did climb out of those holes to either win or force overtime, but that's not the way an elite team is supposed to operate on a consistent basis.
The season is in a downward spiral, but that doesn't mean that Arkansas head coach Bret Bielema needs to start firing coaches.
It just means that Arkansas needs a little more perspective on what it is in 2016.
The offensive line is a massive problem, and has been all offseason. While Dan Skipper and Frank Ragnow are veterans, Bielema doesn't have the experience and familiarity that he had over the previous two seasons with players who have consistently played at a high level.
In the four wins this season, teams couldn't exploit that. TCU and Josh Carraway did at times, but not consistently.
Texas A&M and Alabama forced quarterback Austin Allen to make quick decisions and throw on the move, which is essentially what every other team on Arkansas' schedule is capable of. Ole Miss, Auburn, Florida and LSU are all loaded with NFL-caliber players, Mississippi State's front seven has some talent and Missouri has earned the moniker of "D-Line Zou," even though this season's Tigers aren't what those of the past have been.
Arkansas has a major flaw that will get magnified every week thanks to how the rosters of its opponents are built.
The defensive front hasn't been great—an SEC-worst 14 rushing touchdowns allowed—but has promise. Deatrich Wise is solid, McTelvin Agim has promise and it could turn things around this season. While it hasn't been great, keep in mind that Arkansas' defensive line has had Texas A&M and Alabama in its first two conference games, which have two of the better offensive lines in the SEC.
"@BarrettSallee is Dan Mullens seat getting warm? After seeing Dak in Dallas we see how much he did at MSU
— Agent Andy (@TeamAndyR) October 10, 2016"
Oh man, this always gets Mississippi State fans fired up because I was beating that drum back in 2012 and 2013.
No, he shouldn't be on the hot seat, because what he has done for the program can't be ignored.
He led the Bulldogs to the first No. 1 ranking in program history in the middle of the 2014 season, made a New Year's Six bowl, has earned bowl berths in six straight years (Mississippi State as a program has 19 in its history) and made the program relevant.
He proved that you can win big at Mississippi State while also raising the floor of the program to the point where one rebuilding year can make a question like this seem somewhat reasonable. That's a huge compliment to Mullen and the work he has done in Starkville.
Yeah, a new athletics director is coming in, and that sometimes does have an impact on the stability of a head football coach.
But one season in which Mullen not only had to replace Dak Prescott—the best player in program history—but also his entire defensive staff, several key wide receivers and had offensive line holes in a conference dominated by defensive fronts isn't going to be held against him.
Not at Mississippi State, anyway.
After all, it wasn't too long ago where a bowl of any kind would have resulted in a ticker-tape parade through the streets of Starkville.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Statistics courtesy of cfbstats unless otherwise noted. All recruiting information is courtesy of Scout. Odds provided by Odds Shark.
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and national college football video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on SiriusXM 83. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
