LSU Vs. Alabama Preview: A Few Frivolous Friday Notes

What is it about big games that brings out frivolity? Who knows, but there are a couple of items about THE GAME OF THE CENTURY, Episode III, that caught our eyes Thursday.

O-Bama vs. LSU. This one is quirky and slightly interesting, but it seems that the red states are for President Obama and the purple states are for Mitt Romney. Hey, we didn't highlight it.

Over the last seven elections, since 1984, an Alabama victory has preceded (or followed close behind) a Democratic victory. Conversely, an LSU win has meant the same for the Republican Party.

Which raises an interesting question: Just how much of the Alabama fan base do you really think is pulling for Obama in the election next week? And how many of them would cheer for Alabama anyway even if they knew that this was an actual thing -- as opposed to being a weird coincidence -- and a Tide win would ensure Obama would spend four more years in the White House?

Gary Danielson has become a bit of a problem. Not in real life -- in real life, he's just an analyst with a few annoying habits that you and I have to put up with for a few hours each Saturday. But in Perceptionville, Danielson is at least thought of as the kind of guy that says what a good portion of the SEC fan base thinks, which is a problem inasmuch as he says things like this.

"My personal tiebreaker is that a conference championship game has to stand for something," says Danielson, who'll call CBS' Alabama-LSU on Saturday (8 p.m. ET). "I would penalize Notre Dame for not playing in a conference championship. So after Alabama, my first nod would be to Oregon, since its conference has earned respect, then Kansas State and only then Notre Dame."

Of course, as Mengus22 pointed out on Twitter, it's not that Danielson believes you should actually have to win the conference championship game if you get there. Simply playing in it makes you better than Notre Dame, for reasons that Danielson doesn't bother to explain and probably wouldn't make any sense if he did. But, wait, the SEC's semiofficial mouthpiece isn't done yet.

Actually, says Danielson, even if Alabama had one loss he might put the Crimson Tide in the BCS title game over undefeated teams: "You'd have to put them in the discussion, because they've earned it given what the conference has accomplished."

SO LET'S DO ANOTHER REMATCH! In fact, why don't we just cancel all the other conferences and just have an SEC season every year and give out the crystal football! (Which actually might make sense the way things have gone the last few years, but I digress.)

The point here is that I am by definition an SEC homer -- and I think Danielson is wildly wrong about this. And his saying it, and on a national teleconference, contributes to the idea that we in the SEC are arrogant enough to think that our champion should be in the national championship game no matter what.

And maybe I'm in the minority on this one, but I actually don't think that's the case. I think that SEC teams should earn their way to the BCS the same way that every other team does. Our teams have been doing it every year since 2006, and it's turned out pretty well for almost seven seasons now. If Alabama goes undefeated through the Georgia Dome, I absolutely think they should play for it all in Miami at the end of the season.

But you don't need faulty logic and ridiculous arguments to say that. And when someone who's affiliated with our conference by even a couple of degrees of separation makes those arguments, it doesn't help the SEC. It might help Gary Danielson pander to some of the conference's fans, but I think most of us aren't swayed by that.

We could almost solve the national debt this way. As of this writing, the top ticket on StubHub was going for $1,500. That's $25 a minute of game time or roughly 42 cents a second.