Bama Week: A little ember of anger.

Friends, there is a little ember of ire glowing in the darkness of my soul. A tiny flicker in the night sky. And its pulsing, burning, growing into the flame of rage. And I am somewhat anxious, maybe even scared, maybe even terrified, at the thought of the towering inferno it will be come Saturday afternoon.

You see, Nick Saban is a liar. And I'm not talking about the petty selfish lies he told when he left LSU, or the even greater boldfaced lies he told when he abandoned the Dolphins organization. I'm talking about the lie he has perpetrated with every disengenuous word, every sly action, every whispered insinuation since he returned to college football.

Nick Saban wants to pretend that he made LSU, that he reached down into the red clay with his own hands and sculpted Baton Rouge ex nihilo, out of nothing. He wants to pretend that there was no LSU before 2000. He wants to deny the existence of the Billy Cannons and the Tommy Casanovas and the Kevin Faulks. He wants the world to forget heritage, tradition, the '88 Earthquake Game, the 1979 crowd that could not be stilled, Bert Jones to Davey, and a lil' old Halloween scamper. He wants to take something that was built with the joyous hearts and strong hands and tireless voices of long generations of Cajuns, great grandfathers and grandfathers and father and sons of Louisiana, and he wants to make it his own. Because his hubris knows no bounds. After all, what are we to him but coonasses in a ditch.

It's the truth he wants to blot out, and the truth is this: as much as he made us, we made him. His agent begged for LSU to rescue him from the obscurity of Lansing, begged because even Saban knew that LSU had all of the resources to become a juggernaut. And juggernaut we were. And juggernaut we are long after Saban's shadow has passed from here.

We made you, Nick Saban. And like an angry God displeased with the conniving, arrogant, foolish creatures He has unleashed upon the earth, we are going to unmake you. In the old testament style, with a deluge, a flood of noise in your ear, to drown your ego.

So when Saban marches into Baton Rouge Saturday with the delusional barbarian horde, I am imploring the fans of LSU to stand and rise and scream for sixty minutes. No booing, no grumbling, no doubt, no despair. No petty violence directed at hapless Bama fans. Just the implacable appetite of Tiger Stadium noise. Stand in the place of all the Tiger fans of eras past. Stand to reclaim what is ours. Stand so that there can never be any doubt that we, the fans, the people and living spirit of Louisiana, gave birth to the tradition of LSU football.

Louisiana has given us much, let us give her the vocal defense she deserves.