Are you getting the feeling the Florida Gators are leading charmed lives?
They are 3-1 but could easily be 1-3. Now they're playing a home game that should have been on the road against a team that should never be this bad.
Say hello to LSU, the drama queen of the SEC.
Drama, in this case, is not good. It means losing, palace intrigue, fans with pitchforks, general mayhem and dysfunction.
More than anything, it means AD Joe Alleva is in charge.
Remember The Manchurian Candidate, the classic movie about a U.S. war hero who'd been brainwashed by commies to secretly overthrow the government?
If you didn't know better, you'd think Alleva is a sleeper agent/athletic director programmed by SEC schools to bring down LSU.
You want drama?
LSU fans have started a GoFundMe page to raise money to buy out Coach Ed Orgeron's contract. He's been coach for all of five games.
It had $340 in contributions as of Tuesday afternoon, some $11,999,660 short of the goal. But you get the idea.
A four-star hometown recruit de-committed Monday. Orgeron and his offensive coordinator are reportedly squabbling.
Oh, yeah, the Tigers just lost to Troy at home. They paid the visitors $985,000 to come in and embarrass them.
Much of this is Orgeron's doing, but he's really just a bit player in this tragicomedy. It has been running since Alleva hit Baton Rouge in 2008.
It was a mystery to many why LSU hired him from Duke, where Alleva's resume consisted of hiring terrible coaches and weaseling his way through the lacrosse scandal.
Nine years later, the mystery has only deepened.
Florida got a good taste of Alleva's arrogance last year during the Hurricane Matthew scheduling fiasco.
Long story short, he accused Florida of ducking LSU and demanded a home game. He got it and the Gators upset the Tigers.
Now they have to play in Gainesville this Saturday and again next year. But on the long list of management mistakes, nothing tops the Les Miles Follies.
It was obvious Miles had lost his mojo by 2015, but his wacky ways had endeared him to a lot of fans. When the Tigers upset Texas A&M, LSU administrators stuck their fingers in the wind and suddenly decided Miles was their guy.
When the Tigers started 2-2 last season, Alleva did what he should have done 10 months earlier. Miles was fired, Orgeron was named interim coach and Alleva had a do-over.
LSU fans were appropriately nervous, and Alleva did nothing to soothe their fears when he was asked what kind of search committee he was putting together.
"I'm the search," he said.
When FSU's Jimbo Fisher and Houston's Tom Herman turned him down, "The Search" panicked.
We're talking about LSU here, not Louisiana Tech. Alleva gave one of the top 10 jobs in the country to Orgeron, who'd been a disaster in his only other head-coaching job at Ole Miss.
Not only that, he gave Orgeron a $12 million buyout. Orgeron would have paid LSU $12 million to be its coach.
Miles is still getting $133,000 a month not to coach the Tigers. If LSU terminated Orgeron, the school would be out $21 million in buyout money.
Alleva couldn't fire him if he wanted to, which he probably does. So here we are heading into Saturday.
One team seems to have the angels on its side. The other team' fans are trying to quickly raise $11,999,660 to get rid of their coach.
If they're smart, the rest of the SEC should start a GoFundMe page to raise money to keep Alleva at LSU. That's one show they don't ever want to see end.
Sports on 10/05/2017