There are many things that make Louisiana unique: our Cajun culture, Mardi Gras, great food, hurricanes, and the fact that New Orleans and the state give New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson enormous amounts of financial concessions every year to lose football games. This is because Tom is always threatening to move the Saints and lose somewhere else if we don’t give him everything he wants. He’s even gone so far as to threaten to start winning unless we meet his demands.

Thank goodness for LSU football. When an LSU fan buys his tickets, and pays the surcharges and donations necessary to purchase his tickets, and buys the $400 parking pass, he knows his money is going to a good cause – not to some loser car salesman.

But even college football could stand some improvement, so here are a few rule changes I’ve submitted to the NCAA rules committee for the 2010 football season. Although the committee has failed to respond to my proposals (no surprise there – they want to take credit for these ideas themselves), expect to see many of these dramatic rule changes taking effect next season:

“Prevent Defense” Outlawed

How many times have you watched your favorite team build a comfortable lead, only to see it evaporate in the final minutes when your team starts playing “prevent defense”? This is the defense designed to prevent the “big play” by giving up lots of “little plays” (10-15 yards).

Just one problem: It only takes 10 “little plays” to drive down the length of a 100-yard field and score! So this scheme rarely works.

In fact, you have to go all the way back to the old NFL (Neanderthal Football League), thousands of years ago, to find the last time a “prevent defense” was successfully employed. But it only worked back then because the playing field, at the time, was 500 yards long.

Back in those days, football players were real men, or, more accurately speaking, ape-like creatures who were only a few evolutionary links away from being real men. There were no timeouts, no halftimes, and the only time play was temporarily interrupted was to allow dead bodies to be carried off.

There is no logical explanation for why coaches continue to hold on to a defensive scheme that has not worked for thousands of years, just as there’s no logical explanation for screaming car commercials. What person possessing a brain more advanced than a slug wants to rush down and buy a car from someone who’s screaming at him?

Instant Replay Review

In the interest of fairness, every play of every game will be reviewed and ruled on by a vote of the TV audience, via their remotes. Each coach will be allowed three restraining orders per half to allow time to appeal and enjoin the rulings of the fans, which appeal shall be heard by a panel of judges, composed of one U.S. Supreme Court Justice, the Dalai Lama, and his holiness Pope Benedict XVI.

Because of the additional time required for the necessary rulings and appeals, the first half will be played on Saturday and the second half on Sunday.

New Residency Requirements for Fans

All season ticket holders will be required to reside on campus on football weekends. The basis for this rule change is obvious: The games will take all weekend to play.

Recreational vehicles will be barred from campus, and condominiums will be constructed by the Tiger Athletic Foundation on parking spaces previously reserved for RVs. There will be a $30,000 “condo fee” added to the price of season tickets.

“Make-up Call” Instituted

Basketball fans have long been familiar with this concept: When a ref makes a bad call against one team, he quickly makes up for it by making an equally poor call against the other team, hence the term “make-up call.”

LSU fans will recall 2007, when All-American Glenn Dorsey was chop-blocked by a University of Auburn player. No penalty was called.

The next game, against Alabama, LSU was penalized for 130 yards. You would have thought we were the ones chop-blocking people the game before! Where was the make-up call? Under the new rule, we won’t have to wait until basketball season to get one.

NCAA Officials Unplugged

No member of the officiating crew will be allowed to wear a microphone. Guys, this is football, not Saturday Night Officiating.

New Rating System

Strength of schedule will continue to be a component of the BCS ranking system, but in a major victory for academia, “strength of schedule” has been redefined to include both the strength of opposing football teams scheduled and the strength of classroom courses scheduled. The practice of designating a “national champion” will be abolished and replaced by “first honors.”

“Rent a Win” Concept Done Away With, Replaced by “Rent to Own”

As a result of Title IX and the skyrocketing cost of running a major college football program, the days when any team is willing to fork out $500,000 to play a traditionally weak team (with no assurances of victory) will soon be a thing of the past. No one (i.e., Michigan and Alabama) wants to shell out that kind of money and be embarrassed by an Appalachian State or a University of Louisiana-Bunkie.

This antiquated system will be replaced with a more financially sound “Rent to Own” system, similar to that employed by the Harlem Globetrotters, who play the same team, the Washington Senators, year after year, night after night, and always win. How do they do it? Simple: If the Senators ever won, they would be fired.

In order to duplicate this kind of success in college football, a new conference will be formed, called the “RTO Conference,” with teams composed of players who have been cut from Division II programs. Each program within the BCS conference will be allowed to schedule two teams from the RTO, thus guaranteeing two wins per season.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “Bravo, Antonio! These innovative and provocative rule changes will elevate the sport of college football to an exciting new level of entertainment, worthy to be shown between beer commercials.”