First Impressions: LSU v. Bye Week

There's nothing like a bye week to reacquaint yourself with those other strangers living in your house. It turns out I have a daughter, and she learned to walk! Will the wonders never cease? Now she can get go get me a beer and learn how to squat down so she doesn't block the TV.

Honestly, though, I really needed the bye week. Maybe not as badly as this LSU football team, who simply needs that emotional recharge after the long grind of over two months without a day off, but badly nonetheless. I apologize for the lack of frequency of articles coming from Poseur HQ, but that mainly had to do with way too much work getting in the way of life. Sorry about that, y'all.

Instead of enjoying the bye week like a normal person, I decided to spend the weekend trying to break the world record for most fluid expelled from a human body over a 48 hour span. It was not a pleasant experience, and it caused me to miss most of the football action this weekend.

Oh, I watched it and all, but I was lapsing in and out of lucidness. At one point, I think I saw Florida State beating Miami by 30 points, and that can't be right. Anyway, this was essentially the second straight weekend without LSU football, and I was clearly going through withdrawal.

I spent a good portion of the offseason talking about schedule inequality, but I've let the topic drop during the season for two reasons. One, actual football is being played and that's more interesting. And two, LSU's loss to Ole Miss makes it a bit of a moot point. I don't mean to give the SEC office a free pass or anything, but let's take a break from criticizing the SEC to criticize LSU instead.

LSU isn't entirely a passive victim of scheduling. Okay, we don't have a say in our permanent cross-divisional opponent, and we've gotten bent over the railing on the bridge schedule. But LSU has not helped matters with the parts of the schedule they do control. And I'm not just talking about competition, I'm talking about entertainment.

LSU played Ole Miss on October 19. Now, if we're going to pretend we care about tradition around these parts, the least we can do is get that game as close to Halloween as possible. In the past two weeks, Ole Miss and LSU have combined to play Furman, Idaho, and no one else. That means both weekends on either side of Halloween was available on both teams' schedules. It wasn't the SEC who ignored tradition on this front, this is between the schools. There's no reason that the game could not have been moved one or two weeks later to where it should have been played. That's on LSU.

But more importantly, moving the game up to mid-October has caused the final month of this season to suck. Right when the season should be hitting a fever pitch, we've instead reached over and hit the pause button. LSU played a paycheck game and then had a bye That's two weeks without a competitive football game. This week, we'll play Alabama, which is a great thing, but then we hit the pause button again for yet another bye week.

That's a four week stretch in the home stretch of the season, and LSU will play precisely one game that anyone could possibly have any interest in. That's a full month revolving around one solitary game.

Now, I grant you it's a big game. Alabama is a big deal. But if you wonder why the players, coaches, and fans treat LSU football as a one-game season, it's because the schedule is made in such a way as to put an exclamation point on this game's solitary importance.

We've created a schedule in which we are flat out admitting this is a one game season. The only problem is, as we have learned, this is not a one game season. The other games sort of count, too.

However, this isn't a competition issue, this is a simple entertainment issue. I'm an LSU fan and I like watching LSU football games. In the middle of the season, having a four week stretch in which LSU doesn't really play but one competitive game, on the road no less, is just a complete buzzkill when we should be the most excited.

When I'm sitting on my couch, barely clinging to consciousness due to my fever, I should be inspired to persevere so I can watch my beloved Tigers fight with all of their might. Instead, I just took a nice long nap and dreamt about what it would be like if we had an administration which put the enjoyment of the fans first. Or even second or third.

It was a nice dream.