Game Day: Tulane

Once again, I blog with a wiggly baby in my arms, along with her stuffed toy lion. Once again, Mr. Peabody and Sherman accompany me.

Today is a pretty big day in the SEC. Several interesting games will be going on, some of which will even be televised.

Here is my schedule for the day:

Now - 11:00am: Errands and other non-football related activity.

11:00am - 2:00pm: LSU at Tulane, ESPN2. Tulane is probably the weakest team we play all season. We can really name our score. There probably isn't one player on Tulane's team who could have earned a scholarship to play football at LSU. I just want to get the starters out early, get the backups and young players some game experience, avoid injuries, and reward some walk ons. I may even take the unprecedented step of changing the channel to another game if it gets to the point of playing walk ons.

2:00pm - 2:30pm: Watch the end of South Carolina against Mississippi State. I don't know how good of a team SC is without Brinkley. If they're really going to challenge for the East, they need to win this one, obviously. MSU is not that bad of a team though, and is certainly capable of winning if South Carolina isn't at their best.

2:30pm - 4:00pm: I don't think we're getting Cal vs. Oregon locally, which is a shame because it's clearly the best game on at this time. It's probably the most interesting game of the game nationwide if you don't have a massive SEC bias like I do. No SEC games will be going on at this time, at least not on television. I may do more non-football related activity.

4:00pm - 7:00pm: Bama vs. Florida State, CBS. It's an interesting game, but honestly I think Bama is a superior team. At least, they're superior to the team I saw play Clemson in the first half of the opening week of the season. their offense looked absolutely awful early in that game. If the offensive line has solidified itself, Florida State is a dangerous team. I have to claim a certain amount of ignorance about Florida State, but we can analyze a little. They lost to Clemson, and beat UAB and Colorado in fairly close games. They aren't running the ball effectively, and Drew Weatherford is not a world-beater at QB. They're averaging less than 23 points per game, but their defense has been very solid. They'll have to take big strides to beat Bama unless Bama goes out and plays a bad game.

7:00pm - 10:00pm: Auburn at Florida, ESPN. Word is that ESPN will return to Baton Rouge next week if LSU and Florida both win. LSU doesn't have a serious game, but Florida does. Auburn sure has not looked very good on offense, but their defense returns a lot of previously injured players this week. It was solid to begin with, and should be even better now. Auburn will be getting better again next week when Brad Lester returns. They'll finally have a playmaker on offense. To win this game, they're going to have to find offense somewhere and hope their defense dominates. I'm not rooting for either team (I don't really care that much if GameDay goes to LSU and I don't care if Florida is that highly ranked), but it sure would be nice if Florida suffered some hard body-blows to soften them up.