Tiger Tracklist: Florida

It's all about the game and how you play it, it’s all about control and if you can take it.

LSU was scheduled to play Florida on October 8th in Gainesville. That didn’t happen. Florida was (rightfully) concerned about dealing with the effects of Hurricane Matthew that was bearing down on the state of Florida. However, Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley was adamant in his refusal to reschedule or move the game on that Saturday. Third party sources have confirmed that LSU did everything in their power to make sure the game was played on the weekend of the 8th, be it on Sunday in the Swamp or at a neutral site.

Florida also made a decision incredibly late in the week. A decision that was billed as being final on Tuesday was stretched to Thursday, when the game was scrapped nearly at the zero hour.

Eventually, the decision was reached that the game would be played at Tiger Stadium and next year’s contest would be flipped to Gainesville.

This is the end of the line. There’s no more room for pointing fingers or placing blame. Nowhere else to run. It’s time to play the game,

My god is the sun.

Thanks to #contracts, the game will be played at noon on the SEC Network. This will be the first game played at dead noon local time in Tiger Stadium since the 1980’s. And that is how the careers for Tre White, (likely) Leonard Fournette and Jamal Adams will end. At noon.

Tiger Stadium obviously will not be as oiled as it would be for a 7:00 game, but don’t give Florida the pleasure of thinking they got off easy. The weather won’t be obnoxiously hot and if you cram it in you can get properly hydrated for the game. I realize it’s harder to get into a game for noon, but get to the stadium, and get loud. Give Florida hell, because they deserve it.

Why do they deserve it?

Keep reachin and dissin’, can’t afford mistakes, not on this end.

For the past few years, Florida has been claiming the #DBU moniker, which has solely been in LSU’s possession for years now. Florida’s claim came up from nowhere, as one day during Vernon Hargreaves III’s tenure Florida fans decided that they deserved the title despite LSU having the most defensive backs in the league (11) with the best corner in the league in Patrick Peterson starting the “7 era” at LSU. In addition to that, LSU’s four pro bowl defensive backs (Peterson, Reid, Landry, Clark) is a number only matched by Miami in the mid aughts and LSU has two Thorpe Award winners in 2011 and 2012 while Florida has to reach back to 1996 for the last time a Gator won the award. And that doesn’t include Tyrann Mathieu, who was a Heisman finalist in 2011.

At the heart of all of this is the fact that Florida fans are lowkey the worst. We saw them do the same thing in the spring when baseball beat the top ranked Gators in Baton Rouge. After their defeat, Florida picked up their own rally animal, because anytime LSU does something fun and organic, Florida has to be there to pass it off as their own. That’s a thing now.

Florida doesn’t deserve the moniker, but they can feel free to come to Baton Rouge and try to outperform LSU’s secondary.

There’s a storm you’re starting now

Even including the Alabama game, LSU is playing some of the best football in the nation. The offense has not turned into 2013 Oregon, but the defense behind Dave Aranda has become impossible to breathe under. Florida is banged up everywhere, especially at offensive line. Arden Key is going to break the LSU single season sack record and it will happen this week, unless Florida commits to double teaming him for sixty minutes.

The advantage of a home night game has been taken away, but it’s still LSU and Florida and it’s still likely to be a war. This is the game where a jump pass by Tim Tebow was counteracted by Jacob Hester laying it all on the line four times on fourth down and converting every single time. This is the game where it feels like a fake field goal has been involved more often than it has not. This is the game of upsets and it’s the game of blowouts.

It’s all about the game and how you play it.