SB Nation User Blog: LSU Jonno

Athens: The Trip Report

LSU Jonno — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:02:22 -0000

Hey guys, just wanted to share a few stories from Athens.

We drove from Alabama to Atlanta Friday night. On the way, we stopped to eat dinner at an Arby's in Anniston which is near Jacksonville State, Perrilloux's new digs. We were wearing our LSU "flare" and the lady behind the counter was quite the football fan. We talked about the season some and then she asked, "So what do you guys think about Perrilloux?" I gave the token PC answer and said, "well it is what it is, we just wish he could have kept his head in the game." She replied, "yeah he's been getting into the same type of trouble here". I took that to mean, had we not kicked him off the team in the spring of 2008, he'd have gotten in trouble the night before the 2008 Auburn game, and we'd have been 2-6 in conference last year instead of 3-5.

The following morning, getting to the game from Atlanta was very easy, and we parked in the lot that the LSU Alumni Association reserved.

We immediately began scoping out famous Broad St. for a place to watch the game (we didn't have tickets yet) and came across The Bourbon Street Bar. The only thing about this place that actually reminded me of Bourbon Street was the smell, which was probably the one part they could have done without. We quickly found some scalpers at the gates to what I'll call The Super Grove.

The pictures don't really do it justice, but just know that this tailgating area was about double the size of the grove with only about 10% of the red pant wearing weiners. Really really neat.

Some people in our group bought some tickets from scalpers to upgrade their seats, and I bought their leftovers so I could get into the game. They didn't find out until 10 minutes before kickoff that they had bought fakes, and they were promplty kicked out of the stadium. To get back in, they found a group of 6 people entering the gates and they piled in with them. When the ticket attendant wasn't watching, they zigged and zagged through the gate like a Russell Shepard highlight video and went and sat wherever they could find room in the stadium.

UGA has a pretty nice stadium.

I'll leave the game commentary to Richard, but this was what happened.

After the game we took some people's advice from DawgSports and went to The Varsity. There were coupons on the back of our tickets (even the fakes!!) for a free chilli dog so we took advantage.

The food was as advertised. Freeking awesome.

While eating, I overheard a UGA fan say, "It's amazing but LSU and Georgia fans seem to be the only fan bases in the SEC that don't hate each other." I butted in and told him I completely agreed, as do most of us here it seems, and we started comparing notes over each teams hate level for other teams.

On our way back to the car, after we had watched the evening games at The Varsity, we ran into a drunk guy harassing some UGA girls. The girls called us over for some backup, so we started coaxing the drunk guy into performing different feats of agility to watch him fail. My buddy snagged this picture of him trying to sit indian style in mid air, while I was taking the same exact pictures of him with his own camera.

All in all it was a great trip. The UGA fans were hospitable, and the game day atmosphere in Athens was definitely in the top tier of the SEC. As a pure college town Athens may be the best in the SEC with bars and girls galore. I highly recommend it for those who have not been.

Will the Vandy game be more interesting than we'd like?

LSU Jonno — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:31:51 -0000

I stumbled upon this article today while reading up on Vandy. It shed some light on a few things I didn't know, so here are a few interesting tidbits on Vandy...

Since 2006 Vandy has had more first round draft picks (2) than Auburn (1) or Alabama (1), and according to Rivals, Vanderbilt's talent is comperable to Boise St, Troy, and Tulsa.

Vandy won more SEC games last year (4) than LSU did (3).

This offseason, Vandy commited to learning the Tulsa/Gus Malzahn no huddle hurry up offense to provide an offensive spark, so I guess we shouldn't be too surprised by their offensive outburst last week.

Taking these points into account, (and the fact that Poseur is attending the damn game) we could easily be looking at having another close game on our hands, one which we fail to cover the spread again, and be left with more questions than answers from our football team.

Or we could dominate 35-10.

Either way, this will be a nice tune up for Auburn coming to town next month. GEAUX Tigers.

Travelling to Athens...

LSU Jonno — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:05:41 -0000

Hey guys, Some of us will probably be making the trip to Athens this year for the UGA-LSU football game. I wanted to ping you guys for the best hotel (in close proximity to the stadium and nightlife) and get some suggestions for places to eat and any cool places check out. Need to burn some words... Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers! Geaux Tigers!

xanthous

LSU Jonno — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:35:24 -0000

So I just bought some new shoes for football season. They'll serve as my new "lucky" piece of attire for next season. (You know everyone of you reading this has a "lucky" shirt! You know who you are.) So I was talking to my buddy about them and he quickly reminded me of this RBR word of the day. We had a pretty good laugh about it. Without further ado, my 2009 xanthous, lucky (undefeated!) football season shoes.

BCS DECLARES GERMANY WINNER OF WORLD WAR II

LSU Jonno — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:48:41 -0000

Hey guys,

Got this in an email last week so you may have seen it. Pretty funny stuff.

BCS DECLARES GERMANY WINNER OF WORLD WAR II U.S. ends up ranked 4th

After determining the Big-12 championship game participants the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.

"Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work--including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule--our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking."

Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States the BCS commissioner stated "The US only had two major victories--Japan and Germany. The computer models, unlike humans, aren't influenced by head-to-head contests--they consider each contest to be only a single, equally-weighted event."

German Chancellor Adolph Hiter said "Yes, we lost to the US; but we defeated

#2 ranked France in only 6 weeks." Herr Hitler has been criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn 'style points' to enhance Germany's rankings. Hitler protested "Our contest with Poland was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional forces."

The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented " France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1 ranking they only fell to #2."

Japan was ranked #3 with victories including Manchuria, Borneo and the Philippines.

James Willis

LSU Jonno — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:15:13 -0000

Hey guys,

The latest rumor mill at LSU has us landing James Willis as our new LB coach. I saw that he was the LB coach at AU for the last 3 years or so, and I think I saw where yall were sad to see him and Paul Rhodes go when Chizik was brought in but I can't remember.

I looked up his recruiting info on Rivals (not sure how accurate that stuff is) and they attribute a fair shair of yall's recruits to him.

What are you guys' thoughts on him? Have any of Auburn's LB's gone pro from his tutelage?

Auburn Coaching search...

LSU Jonno — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:22:37 -0000

This is comment I left on Track'em Tigers. Given Richard's encouragement for more fan posts, and my affinity for tooting my own horn, I've reposted it here for your reading pleasure. Auburn's search for a coach is now over, although it seems my joke candidate below was probably a better choice...

I fully expect to see this headline in the next few days...

Auburn To Interview Miss Cleo To Be The Next Head Football Coach At Auburn University.
The deal is not yet done, but sources at Auburn and The Psychic Readers Network told AuburnUndercover.com that Miss Cleo, who is a self-proclaimed psychic and shaman who achieved fame as a spokeswoman for a psychic pay-per-call service in the late 1990s and early 2000s, could be offered the job within a matter of days.

“Who better than the psychic Miss Cleo to game plan against Vanderbilt and those damn last minute touchdown passes that LSU keeps tossing up against us”, asked Auburn AD Jay Jacobs when asked to comment about the move.
When asked about the recuiting benefits Jacobs stated, “Employing a proven psychic like Miss Cleo will allow us to know exactly when and where Nick Saban plans to recruit so that we can always be one step ahead of our in-state rivals on the recruiting trail…” “We’ll also know exactly which selling points to focus on when talking to recruits, you know, because she’s psychic.”
When asked to comment on how Miss Cleo stacked up against the other 238 interviewees for the position Jacobs offered, “Well there was no comparison really.” “Miss Cleo flat out ‘blew us away’ in the interview process. It was like she knew the exact answers we were looking for to all of our questions. It was really impressive when she started giving answers to the next question we were about to ask her…before we asked it.”

Miss Cleo’s contract is said to be in work for a limited time at a low, low price of $1M per year plus 99 cents per minute when she is performing her head coaching duties.

LSU is still an above average SEC team this year...

LSU Jonno — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:01:28 -0000

...only because the SEC is not as dominating as in years past. UF is an elite team, UGA and Bama are really good, and LSU is above average. We will likely have a winning SEC record this year, playing all three teams better than us, which makes us above average. Let's face is though, our defense is bad. Really bad. Worst in the SEC bad. Our defense has managed to give up the following point totals:

21 Auburn*

24 MS St.*

51 UF*

17 SC

52 UGA*

Teams that are starred (*) are teams that we allowed to score their SEC season high point total through that point in the season. Auburn has since topped that mark by one point against lowly Arkansas (although Arkansas gave them a "free" safety at the end of the game rather than punting from their endzone). Freaking MS St. will probably not score 24 pts the rest of the year combined. Florida, having had a renewed level of confidence, has since beaten their point total against UK, and UGA (who couldn't hang 52 on 1AA Georgia Southern) won't dump more than 52 on a single foe for the rest of the year, much less in SEC competition.

Let's face it, LSU's defense is the government bailout of college football. When other teams are stuggling to score points, they schedule LSU. Yes, that's right, LSU's defense is what is known in the male college crowd as a slump buster. We're turning into the once popular girl you take home from the bar just to prove you've still got it. We were the hot girl in highschool, so teams think they've really accomplished something by beating the ever living crap out of us, but now we're the girl that everyone has a shot at. Slump Busters try to justify their behavior to their friends by saying things like "He's really nice", "I was really wasted that night" or "They scored 17 of their points off of turnovers". But deep down you know and I know we're a slump buster. How do I know we're a slump buster? Because Gator Fans (see the comments section) are already starting to think that their little conquest isn't quite so meaningful anymore.

Sure our offense is putting our defense in tough situations at times, but they are also scoring a lot more points than anyone thought they would. Our defense just can't get it together. When we play soft, teams pick us apart underneath. When we blitz, we blitz too many, don't get to the QB in time, and give up the big play. We can't get rid of the players (and frankly with consistent top 10 recruiting classes why would you want to?) so the DC's have got to go. I'm not at all mad that we lost to UF and UGA, I'm mad that we've given up a combined 103 points in those games. Please Les. I'm tired of getting drilled, figuratively and literally. I'm tired of being the slump buster.

Tony Franklin Fired!!

LSU Jonno — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:43:09 -0000

Tony Franklin Fired!!

Does Franklin make it through the year?

LSU Jonno — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:13:59 -0000

I think he's out this week. Worst play calling I've ever seen. I feel bad for you guys. Wasting a lot of running talent on Franklin's "Dumb ass". His words, not mine.

Good luck the rest of the year guys.

Gotta waste words now.

GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS! GEAUX TIGERS!