Decent Read

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They didn't seem so much interested in playing defense as they were in playing a kill-by-colors game that happened to involve a ball, pads, and helmets. If colorblind as a group, they would all currently be incarcerated for attempted manslaughter. This may be the best compliment you can every pay a defense in football, and you are welcome, LSU.

By the time a very controlled, poised, and nearly unrecognizable-in-his-calm Jarrett Lee dropped in a fade to put LSU up 16-6, the result assumed by violence on the field finally showed up on the scoreboard. Ten points might as well be twenty against this defense, and the LSU offense spent the rest of the night playing like it. They ran to bleed clock. They ran because running hurts the other team one installment at a time. They ran because Les Miles has now completed his transformation of LSU into a Bo Schembechler team, but not the grim Bo you know. This Bo had a midlife crisis, moved to Louisiana, and picked up a taste for riverboat casino blackjack and women who liked their liquor neat and their guns well-greased and loaded.

The fundamentals are the same, but in this mutation of the species he wears Mardi Gras beads and calls ballsy onside kicks in the third quarter of an SEC road game. This Bo commutes in a sensible car, but takes the occasional ride with the Devil on weekends. This Bo is called Les Miles, and he is the most entertaining Schembechler avatar wandering the sidelines anywhere.

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