Tulane Preview

There are two items of big news for the Tulane game. First, we're wearing special uniforms with a pelican emblam, white pants, and a white helmet. Tulane will also be wearing special uniforms. Proceeds from sales of the uniform will go to Katrina relief. Unfortunately for them, I haven't heard of anyone being that excited about this game or about the uniforms. Which brings me to the second item of big news.

This game will be played at 11:00am on ESPN2 Saturday morning. It is my hope that the powers that be didn't see this coming when they scheduled the game. I think they expected an afternoon or evening game schedule by ESPN. Instead, symptomatic of a general lack of interest in this game, it's been picked up for the 11:00am game usually reserved for Illinois vs. Indiana or UVA vs. Maryland.

And it's not just television. At my last check, LSU still hadn't sold 9,000 out of its 40,000 ticket allotment.

News Flash to LSU Athletics Department: Most LSU fans don't really care about Tulane anymore. For people my age and younger, and probably for people significantly older than I am, we don't remember a time when Tulane was a serious threat to LSU. We don't remember a time when Louisiana had a large number of Tulane fans. We don't remember a time when Tulane fans really cared a lot about football or thought they had a superior team.

So, we play Tulane this week, likely in a partially full Superdome, before the tailgaters eat lunch.

But what about the game? Well, Tulane is 1-2 so far this year, having lost to Mississippi State and Houston. They beat Southeast Louisiana. They're giving up 33 points per game and scoring about 18 points per game. Their backup quarterback, Anthony Scelfo, has won the job over their previous starter Scott Elliott, who only completed an average of 11 passes per game. As a team, they're averaging about 180 yards passing per game and about 140 yards rushing per game.

I have a feeling we'll see a little of Scott Elliott before the game's over.

The guy they try to get the ball to is Matt Forte #25. He rushed an ungodly 40 times against Southeast Louisiana University for a very impressive 303 yards. Matt Forte in that game accounted for more than 2/3 of Tulane's rushing totals on the season. I have a feeling he'll find the sledding a little tougher against LSU. He also has about 1/4 of Tulane's pass receptions.

This is a team that has had trouble offensively except in one game, and that was against SE Louisiana. Defensively, they haven't given up gaudy numbers, but they allowed Michael Henig to have a pretty good game against them, and allowed 300 yards passing to Houston.

Alright. We know the goal here is to get an easy win and get out. We want to use this game to

• tune up for Florida
• shorten the season for our best players by getting them out early
• get our younger players some game experience
  

We want to spring out to a quick lead and get it to halftime before rotating in the backups and the next generation of players. Protect the starters from injury and wear and tear. In particular, we need Matt Flynn to come out of this game healthy enough to go against Florida. I really hope we don't see a repeat of last week's debacle where Flynn stayed in a game in which he was so ineffective.