LSU's 2008 football season is a failure, and its effort on Friday was an unmitigated failure.



Arkansas was the team with the worst record in the SEC. What does it say about you when you can't beat the worst team in the SEC?

It says that YOU'RE the worst team in the SEC.

Guess what? That's LSU right now. They're the worst team in the SEC.

No, the Tigers don't have the worst record in the SEC. Mississippi State, Tennessee and Arkansas are worse. But considering that LSU has lost its last four SEC games and went 2-4 in the second half of the season (with a lackluster win over a beat-up Tulane team and a 37-point comeback over mighty Troy State standing as the only victories), and couldn't beat a putrid Arkansas team, I'd like to hear a convincing counterargument for how LSU isn't the worst team in the league at this point.

After all, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi State have all beaten SEC opponents in the past two weeks. LSU hasn't beaten one since October.

Fact is, the Tigers are the worst team in the conference right now. When you can't hold a 16-point lead against Casey Dick and Dennis Johnson, you're the worst team in the SEC. When you can't run the ball against Arkansas' defense you're the worst team in the SEC. When you have a quarterback on the field who doesn't even know your playbook and his backup is a walkon who didn't even complete 40 percent of his passes as a high school senior, you're the worst team in the SEC.

LSU won a national championship last year, and yet right now they're the worst team in the SEC.

Think about that for a minute. And if it offends your sensibilities and it makes you think this can't be right, then come up with a defense of this football team.

I'd like to hear one.

But as far as I'm concerned, this is the worst team in the SEC.

Les Miles is responsible for LSU being the worst team in the SEC, and the primary reasons for this to have happened is being non-functional at quarterback and that has become a cancer which has spread throughout an offense which has completely broken down, and defensively LSU's players have completely given up on a coaching staff which is worthless both in terms of game-planning and its ability to get the players to execute the meager schemes they operate within.

Bo Pelini's scheme was average at best at LSU for the three years prior to this one. Pelini was a pretty good coach, though - he had his players believing in what he was doing, and within a mediocre defense he was able to make some tactical moves which resulted in plays being made often enough for the overall defensive results to be good. But Miles' colossal mistake, one which has put his entire coaching tenure at LSU on the verge of collapse - another season like this one next year and he's going to be fired at LSU regardless of a national title less than 12 months ago - was not to recognize the mediocrity of Pelini's scheme and, when Pelini scored the head coaching job at Nebraska (my guess is that Miles will play Pelini in Shreveport a few days after Christmas and at this point there is no reason whatsoever to think LSU can beat Nebraska) Miles needed to come up with something new.

He didn't. He chose a poor imitation of a mediocre scheme, and the consequences were insufficient game planning and total disorganization on the sidelines - and worse, a defensive team which mutinied weeks ago.

The only way to fix the problem is to fire every single coach associated with LSU's defense, and particularly Doug Mallory, Bradley Dale Peveto and Earl Lane - at this point it's impossible to see how any of those guys could possibly have any credibility with the Tiger players going forward - but it's Miles' fault those coaches have to go. Further, there are several players on LSU's defense with eligibility remaining who need to be run out of the program because they're cancers. I won't name them, even though I might as well, but the point is it's Miles' fault they're cancers - had he supplied these highly-recruited and talented athletes with coaches and schemes they could believe in they probably wouldn't have given up on him.

That's the state of LSU's football program right now. The players have given up on the coaches, and right now I don't think the coaches have much belief in the players.

Both sides are correct, too.