Auburn - A week off should heal us and prepare us for the faux Tiger Pigeons of the Plains. My only gripe - someone...someone key is going to be injured and I can't say who, but it can't be good for us. And you know how strange these LSU vs. AU games always are? The AU kicker catches on fire inside the LSU bandmember's tuba...The Auburn coaches and players smoke cigars as they jump up and down on the midfield logo beofre the game starts....an LSU WR gets body slammed in the locker room by an AU LB an hour before kickoff, but the ball was tipped, so the LB can play in the game after all. You also know how sometimes Auburn waltzes in and just starts putting points on the board in TS like in '93, '97, '99, and '07? I just already have that gut feeling...this is going to be LSU's worst and their best...and that spells trouble. A game to compare it to from the archives of bad? 2001 Ole Miss. LSU should win the game, but tonight will belong to the Auburn PlainsPigeons. This one will sting and the Rant will melt for a while. Chicken will need Circus Child to awaken and actually work on restoring the sight after it crashes temporarily due to a SFP thread that is about Keiland Williams being racially discriminated because he's darker than C Scott.

Alabama...As well as we play in Loosa, dating back to '82 when we basically took the Bear's heart and let Dalton Hilliard and Alan Risher play toss swseep with it, we finally won't play well and this one's really gonna sting. Saban's team now looks like LSU used to....tough, mean, confident, fast, assignmnet-knowing, and hungry for more than the SEC west. Ingram, Jones, Arenas, and McElroy are like 2003's Vincent, Clayton, Green, and Mauck. This is a scary team and yeah, we may be all wrong on them just by looking at three opponents - a BSC bowl-like opponent and then some rent-a-wins, but I see a lot of guys flying to the football when I watch them play. LSU has the same type of athletes...just ours seem to pull a Socrates during each play instead of a Clubber Lang. Confidence is there, but 11 defenders all seem to want to ask the other if this method or that formation deserves this look. Yeah, I see guys flying around; Chris Hawkins and Chad Jones and even Jacob Cutrera I see them flying...around. LIke I said, equal talent, but there is an intangible there and I am afraid to say it for fear of my e-life. Only the bold and daring likes of Richard Condon would go so far as to publically say what I want to say but cannot. Condon's not the best 100 percent knowledgeable sports guy who talks nothing but sports on the radio anyway. He'll also pick Bama and he;ll talk about the 1977 game we lost in TS and how he and his buddies still snuck in flasks of 8 year Old Charter from 1969 into the game. Anyway, Bama wins and LSU now has to really find out who they are. Losing the next and final two games could be the difference in Dallas and Shreveport or What's in your wallet? and Why is this bowl game on the NFL Network at noon?

Ole Miss - Gut check time and the #5 Rebels, who have lost only to #3 Bama, are riding high and hoping that the Iron bowl of next week brings major Auburn gifts and why not - the game is in Jordan-Hare? Meanwhile, the Rebs take care of their own business THIS week and all that good luck that Ole Miss seems to always have shoud pay off with a win over 7-3 and 24th ranked LSU. This is a classic - sort of a 2003 feel to it, but not really. After the Rebs make it look easy early, LSU sort of decides to punch back. To be short with this one, McClester and Snead will give LSU fans a stroke, but two freshmen for LSU named Shepard and Randle earn their stripes in this game by making the Rebel defense look downright 2008 LSU lost at times. Keiland Williams looks like 2006 KW and rushes for 120 yards. As the gun sounds (the one that never is shot), LSU pulls off its biggest upset in quite some time. Ole Miss is eliminated from Atlanta. Instead, the Rebels will have to beat the tar out of State and then maybe hope and pray the state of Florida will allow them to play. But who cares about them? Who cares that Alabama and Florida will have yet another rematch for a spot to play Texas in the national c'ship (unless Nebraska and Pellini can pull off a Big XII North Bill Snyderesque kind of upset). LSU, meanwhile, at 8-3, is back home for senior day to get an inviite of their own to Orlando.

Arkansas - I'd like to tell you it ends good, but I don't really have to lie here as nothing's shocking since the same game two years earlier that killed the collective puppy of Tiger Stadium in overtime. We thought the dream season was over...just go to the SEC c'ship and win and then beat the stuffing out of Colt Brennan and Hawaii. Or, just let two other teams choke like choke's never been done and let UGA go handle Hawaii and we can play a week later in NOLA. That's what a loss to Arkansas did to us before...what will one do now? Les and Petrino match up about as well as Opie Griffith and Mickey Knox. Arkansas is going to confuse LSU db's like MASS COM 1001 confuses LSU db's. We take our swings and get our points, but man...it's just some new tradition about this game - Saturday or not - that just leaves a bottomless pit in your stomach. Sure, we should win. We're better and Petrino still isn't close to having the arsenal he wants on the field. Why wouldn't we win? Who's kicking footballs 20 feet in the air now? Who's grabbing whatever they can get a hold of at the bottom of a pile and who is talking to the ref like he's an ex girlfriend? It's the stupid things like these that will always happen a day or two after turkey and dressing and I'm sorry - but LSU will again find a way to lose this stupid forced rivalry game with arKANSAS...and Miles better stop saying that or Petrino will talk about how respectable and tough the SEC Conference is. It will be a high scoring affair, but a typical big time mistake or three - a 1998 tipped not once but twice ball into the hands of an Alabama defender-type of game mixed with last year's Rahem Alem kickoff classic will be the 4th loss in the column. There goes the 9-3 and the 10-2 and the 14-0 that so many Buddy Songy callers reported into a Friday remote at Sullivan's. Not to worry. Dallas will call and LSU and Les will play Okie State - a three loss offensive powerhouse that will offer Miles a chance to coach against a team full of gusy that he didn't recruit. They might have a Kirston Pittman in Stillwatwer - one left over from his 2003 Cotton Bowl squad. I doubt it...but who knows?