The LSU Tigers can beat the Florida Gators.

How? I'm glad you asked.

Simplify the playbook

LSU's offense suffers from information overload and an embarrassment of riches. Just because someone can design 100 really cool plays, it doesn't mean you have to learn and practice them all.

Just because you have a lot of assets and more ways than ever to spend them, it doesn't mean you have to withdraw all of them from the bank in one day.

Identify what you do best, what you can do against Florida, and practice those things until you can do them in your sleep. Be precise. If there's a good chance a complicated game plan will confuse your players, it's not worth installing it and pinning your hopes on confusing the other guy's players.

Practice communication

Do I even have to explain why?

Entertain the Gators

No, I'm not talking about fraternizing Friday night. I'm talking about dancing Saturday night. If your offensive line can't dominate the line of scrimmage, you engage the defensive linemen by calling draws and screens and keeping those big guys busy.

Use their strength and speed against them instead of helping them use them to maximum benefit. Suck them in, get them leaning, make them over pursue. If you can't pancake them, entertain them.

(And if all else fails, throw up on them.)

Repair the relationship or ditch the pitch

Jordan Jefferson's timing is off on option plays. So is the relationship between the quarterback and the pitch man. Fix both problems or run something else.

The strength of the option rests in its ability to force a defender to choose, to commit. If you pitch the ball too soon, you eliminate the key to the option. You do the same if you have the wrong spatial relationship between quarterback and running back.

As quick as defensive players are in today's SEC, and especially on Florida's roster, a 4-foot gap between your QB and his pitch man all but negates the advantage created by something approximately twice that distance. The smaller the gap, the less necessary it is for the defender to pick who he's going to attack, and the less costly it is for him if he guesses wrong.

The close relationship between quarterback and tailback is a refusal to commit to the option, and it's really no option at all. Spread it out, and if you're too concerned about ball security and pitch accuracy to do so, scrap it. It's doing nothing for you as a half-arse approach.

Some mental Stickum for the WRs

This is No. 1 vs. No. 4. This game has championship implications. Dropped passes separate the good ones from the great ones, and one mistake can be the difference between 6-0 and 5-1.

Catch the ball and secure it before you turn upfield to run, before you think about the hit you're about to take, before you consider which teammate you want to chest-bump or rib-bump in mid-air.

This is the kind of game where good is the enemy of great, and where greatness grasps -- firmly -- that there is no tomorrow, no second chance. Drop it, and you'll think about it for the rest of your life.

Superman is a mere mortal

Florida will have to learn how to play without Tim Tebow, without him at full speed, or at least without much of the playbook that makes him one of the biggest difference-makers in college football history.

He can cheer all he wants from the sideline, but it will be like a powerless Clark Kent egging on the police and armed forces in Metropolis while Zod satisfies his appetite for destruction. Without Tebow, the Gators have to convince themselves they can thrive without their superhero. I'm not sure that deep down, they believe it.

With Tebow at less than full tilt, and without the threat of his usual hard-nosed, lead-with-the-helmet running, the Tigers have much better matchups with their defense.

The trick up the sleeve

After simplifying the playbook, find the one gimmick, the one gadget play the Gators will never see coming. Wait for the right moment, and run it.

Tiger Stadium

With the right vibe, this homefield advantage is a difference-maker itself. The Tiger Stadium of the 2003 Georgia game, of the 2007 Florida game, can bring that vibe. The Tiger Stadium that's slow to fill up, that rolls over and plays dead at the first sign of adversity, as we've seen at least a handful of times or more this decade, plays into Florida's hands.

If LSU pops a surprise on the Gators early, the Valley will shake. Remember the onside kickoff against Auburn in 2001, and the wave of emotion that unleashed? That could happen Saturday, but this Florida team requires a 60-minute commitment. People left the stadium and started lining up for SEC Championship Game tickets long before that 2001 game was over.

There is no room for such a luxury with these Gators. This is a night when you can't expect the players to bring their 'A' game and come with anything less than yours.

Saturday night in Tiger Stadium

LSU hasn't lost a Saturday night game in Death Valley since 2002, the humbling 31-0 defeat at the hands of Alabama the week after the Bluegrass Miracle. LSU is more generous with itself and its definition of "night game" than the NCAA is, but that's a significant streak no matter the exact number of games.

You could argue the streak owes much of its existence to the fact that LSU played most of its marquee opponents in the afternoon, rather than at night, but this game against the No. 1 team and the reigning national champion would be an impressive extension of the streak and raise it to almost mythic proportions.

Remember Urban Meyer knows Dan Mullen

I don't think I need to explain that one either.

Self-scout, then bait 'em

If there's one thing Gary Crowton does almost better than anyone else is set up a defense by running a series of plays designed to expose a vulnerability he can exploit for a touchdown at the right time.

This has to be LSU's best week of self-scouting, of finding a trusted, dispassionate scientest of Xs and Os to study the Tigers and their tendencies, reveal what Urban Meyer will no doubt see as trends to exploit, then set him up to expect a zig when LSU zags.

Bait the Gators. Get them to lean into the punch -- or away from the artful dodge.

Do it with John Chavis and the defense too.

To show up and say you'll do what you do and see if it's good enough to beat what they do would be a mistake. This will be a thinking man's game, and it has to be played that way for LSU to win. The Gators have too much talent for Miles to assume the Tigers can win with the same approach as in the first five games of the season.

LSU can win this game, and I think there's a good chance the Tigers will. They won't if they're too stubborn to realize Florida won't let them get away with mistakes that became footnotes to victories against the likes of Washington, Vanderbilt, Mississippi State and Georgia.

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Carl Dubois has written or blogged about LSU sports since 1999. He's drawn a few plays in the dirt, but not since junior high, and never against Urban Meyer, so everything he wrote above this tagline should be taken with a shaker of salt. You can contact him at carl1061 'at' gmail.com.