All systems appear to be more-or-less go for a game on Saturday. It'll be one of the strangest game atmospheres ever if it were to occur. Almost all of East Baton Rouge Parish is without power, as are most of the parishes surrounding EBR, and it will be slow to come back. There are power lines down everywhere.
Despite all the fear of a disaster in New Orleans, that town appears to be in significantly better shape than Baton Rouge right now.
Yes, Gustav was not Katrina, not by a long shot. But those of you outside of Louisiana should not be fooled by the fact that it wasn't apocalyptic. It was still pretty bad, and while cleaning up won't take years like it took (is taking) to clean up after Katrina, it will definitely take weeks. Life in Baton Rouge will be at a crawl for quite some time while electricians get the city running again and roofers fix houses around the clock.
In the midst of all of this, LSU is planning, as of now, to be putting on a football game. As it is, I speculate that it may be necessary to move the game to an earlier time because there may not be any electricity to run the lights. But perhaps I'm being pessimistic. Hopefully the biggest and worst of the problems in the area can be fixed within a few days.
I am not exactly sure what I think of this. I was all for playing the App State game on Saturday (and didn't feel all that great about moving it up to earlier in the day). This somehow strikes me as different. That was before the hurricane, while everything was running normally and there were no trees lying across the roads. Now, the city is in a state of upheaval, and the surrounding areas are probably in even worse condition.
The side of me that really wants to play the game is the side that says:
- The team really needs the extra game experience, particularly at the very important quarterback position;
- We could really use that open date in November rather than now, and we'd have to use that date to reschedule this game; and
- It really isn't magically going to get better the next week when we're scheduled to host North Texas.
It comes to what I think of as two competing interests. The fans are better off if the game is canceled and rescheduled for November. The team is better off if the game plays as scheduled. For a contrary view on whether it's good for the team, you can feel free to read clair's take at TigerForums.
This is a simplistic analysis that discounts the certainty that many fans would consider themselves better off so long as the team is better off, regardless of how it impacts them otherwise.
I have to admit, the part of me that has that Southern Pride in all things football thinks of how awesome it would be if we held an important football game in the middle of a disaster area when we didn't really have to, and did so only because, "It's important enough." No one could accuse our town of being soft on football.
Anyway, we end with a poll. Not that I'll get many voters, because it appears that most of my readers are no longer on the internet.