Les Miles has gone 22-4 in his two seasons at LSU. Steve Franz/WireImage.com
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In a follow-up conversation with reporters several days after his initial comments, Miles harped on a theme that's become almost nauseatingly redundant among SEC coaches over the past year: Why their league is so tough. Miles' view may just be the most zealous yet. If college football were to go to an eight-team playoff, he said, "there'd probably be at least four SEC teams in the top eight."

Seriously?

We've heard it. We get it. We've put it in bold type across the cover of Sports Illustrated: The SEC is the toughest conference. Florida proved that in the title game.

But it's not like the league is indisputably head and shoulders above everyone else. Perhaps Miles needs a reminder that two of his league's best teams last year, Arkansas and Tennessee, lost to the third- (Wisconsin) and fourth-place (Penn State) teams from the Big Ten in their bowl games. Or that the year before that, the SEC's champion (Georgia) lost its bowl game to the Big East's champion (West Virginia).

But apparently Miles' beef is not with the Big Ten or Big East. It's with those softies on the West Coast. Specifically, when asked by a reporter whether "something must be done about USC," Miles replied, "Should something be done about SC? Yeah. It might just have to be the system first, though." Translation: The "system" is presumably unfair because it allows a team like USC to waltz into the title game.

Such has become a common refrain since the Trojans' rise to dominance under Carroll: If USC played in a "real" conference, they'd lose xxx number of games. Regardless of how you feel about the Pac-10, this is a pretty idiotic sentiment seeing as the Trojans have continually beaten upper-echelon foes from those conferences under Carroll (including a 4-0 record against the SEC).

USC's easy "path" last year included a BCS team (Notre Dame) and two major-conference division champions (Nebraska and Arkansas). LSU's non-conference schedule, meanwhile, consisted of Louisiana-Lafayette, Tulane, Fresno State and Arizona. Under the BCS' old strength-of-schedule formula -- the one that shined so favorably upon the Tigers in '03 prior to its removal from the standings, the Trojans played the nation's toughest schedule; LSU's was 11th.

Nevertheless, Miles apparently felt moved to begin his BCS lobbying efforts in July (and to think people got on Urban Meyer for doing the same thing too early in November). That is, if you believe his speech was actually about lobbying.

It's highly unlikely Miles would actually concern himself with the possibility of his team being edged out of the national title game six months in advance. No coach in the country would ever presume his team will get that far -- not when they're busy freaking out about their shrinking depth at right tackle or the backup cornerback's summer-school grades.

So what, then, was the motivation behind his unexpected boisterousness? Here's a guess: He's covering his butt.

Yep. That's right. Miles' comments were one big excuse-in-the-making. He's seen the prognostications. He knows the experts are projecting a USC-LSU matchup. He knows his fans are foaming at the mouth for just such an outcome. And he's trying to diffuse those expectations -- and temper the possible letdown -- by saying, "Hey, I'd love to play USC, too, but if they get there and we don't, it's because we had to play Florida while they got to play Stanford."

You can read it between the lines in this follow-up comment to the Baton Rouge Advocate: "To say that the only achievement and the only positive ending is with one game and one game's ending, that's near-sighted, and that's a long way away."

Well, here's one person who's not letting you off the hook so easily, Les. You and your people have laid down the gauntlet, so now, you better make this thing happen. If the Trojans hold up their end of the bargain and reach the Superdome, we better see some purple and gold on that other sideline.

You worked up the crowd, coach -- now give 'em what they want.