Bowl Chaos Season

THERE WAS not a lot of suspense at Tiger Stadium last Saturday, with Louisiana Tech on the homecoming menu. That was fine with LSU fans, whose nerves are a bit frayed these days, the result of coach Les Miles's proclivity for living on the edge. The Tigers ran their record to 9--1 with a 48-point win over the Bulldogs. One of the loudest cheers of the night arose when the news came over the public-address system that the Buckeyes had gone down.

Jacob Hester, who had a career-long 87-yard touchdown run against Tech, couldn't resist drawing a distinction between LSU and the Buckeyes: "The parity in college football is unbelievable. The thing is, when you have those close games, you have to pull 'em out."

Or if you don't pull them out, make sure the loss happens early enough in the season for your team to work its way back up the rankings. On Oct. 13 the Tigers lost at Kentucky in triple overtime, but they didn't panic. "Me and [quarterback] Matt Flynn and [defensive tackle] Glenn Dorsey told the guys, 'Hey, it's early in the season; we've got a lot of games in front of us; we can still work our way up to where we need to be.'"

Flynn speaks from experience. He was a redshirting freshman on LSU's 2003 national champions. That team, you'll recall, overcame a mid-October loss (to Florida) to reach the national title game.

As will these Tigers, if they win at Ole Miss this week, at home against Arkansas on the day after Thanksgiving and in the SEC championship game on Dec. 1, against Tennessee or Georgia, in all likelihood.

With the egg laid by Ohio State, LSU moved to the top of the BCS. Advancing to No. 2 was Oregon and its dynamite quarterback, Dennis Dixon, who runs the Ducks' spread option with a virtuosity that Williams can only hope to achieve. "He's got a little Dennis in him," Patrick Chung allows, somewhat grudgingly, of Williams. Chung, Oregon's starting rover, sat in his apartment last Saturday'the Ducks were idle'watching Williams upend the Buckeyes. Did he jump off the couch? Shout for joy?

"No, no, no'it wasn't like that," insists Chung, who recalls thinking, All right, we needed that. That helped us. Now let's get back to work.

Not helping Oregon was Michigan's flat performance at Wisconsin. Every game the Wolverines drop'and they will be underdogs against Ohio State this Saturday'devalues the Ducks' victory in the Big House in September. Devalues it, at least, in the unseeing eyes and heartless algorithms of the BCS computers. And that's not the only way Oregon stands to get hosed.

Even if the Ducks win out'they've got Arizona this Thursday in Tucson, UCLA in the Rose Bowl on Nov. 24 and Oregon State at home on Dec. 1'they could be bounced from the title game by events beyond their control. Profitable though it would be, the Pac-10 refuses to cleave itself into divisions and schedule a championship game. The BCS computers don't give a fig for the Pac-10's virtue; the Ducks stand to be leapfrogged by a team that has a conference title game.

Does that possibility prey on his mind? "Not at all," says Chung. "We've just got to play to our potential."