The path and timing of Hurricane Ike’s trek to the gulf coast may well mean LSU loses a second-straight warmup game in preparation for Auburn Sept. 20.
Needless to say, this would not be good. The Tigers were expecting – and counting on – three low-key warmup games to get a new quarterback and a young defensive backfield ready for a major test against the War Eagles on the road. If the North Texas game also gets delayed, Andrew Hatch and Jarrett Lee will go in to Auburn having thrown 16 and 10 balls respectively in their college careers. Meanwhile, Auburn will have had its full three games to prepare and season its quarterbacks.
This doesn’t bode well.
Update: The Advocate (the Baton Rouge daily, not the national gay newspaper) says alternative sites are being considered for the game. Those alternatives – New Orleans and Dallas. New Orleans? Somehow I don’t see how moving the game closer to the hurricane to a city that would likely be under evacuation orders if Ike is close enough to cancel a Baton Rouge game makes sense. I guess Dallas is far enough inland to avoid a lot of trouble, but it could be that Dallas is getting tropical-storm-like conditions then.
This is, frankly, a tough spot no matter what. Moving the entire LSU football operation is no light task, and one would assume there would need to be a couple days’ lead time just to get that cool 18-wheeler loaded up and sent to a new site. Say a decision is made Wednesday – there will still be no certainty as to where Ike is going. If the game is moved to Dallas, you would also likely be asking LSU fans to drive through bad weather heading northwest to the site. Makes no sense.
Hey, it looks like the Georgia Dome is available. If you gotta move, moving far east away from the storm isn’t the worst idea ever.
