Tiger fans have been walking on air ever since LSU won the 2007 BCS National Championship in a game played in the year 2008. This was not unusual. LSU won the 2003 national championship in a game played in 2004. The 2008 championship will be determined by a game played in 2009, and so on. This is done solely for tax reasons.

            This was the second year in a row that Ohio State was soundly beaten by an SEC team. The reasons are obvious: First, the SEC has more speed than the Big Ten, and second, “the Buckeyes” is a ridiculous name for a football team. Who is going to be intimidated by what is basically a member of the acorn family?

             “Hey, look out! I’m going to throw this buckeye at you and put your eye out!”

            Ohio State needs a more intimidating name, something that would strike fear into the hearts of its opponents, such as “the Ohio State Dirty Bombs,” or perhaps “the Deadly and Highly Infectious, Flesh-Eating Bacteria of Ohio State.”

            Florida Coach Urban Meyer was part of the FOX Sports broadcast team for the championship game, and after it was over, LSU players surrounded Meyer, chanting “SEC! SEC! SEC!” Meyer, obviously deeply moved by this admirable demonstration of conference pride and unity, displayed all the emotions of a dead fish. Honestly, Urban, you always look like you’re fresh from a lobotomy! Show some emotion out there, man!

Maybe Urban needs to enroll in the NCAA’s School of Coaching Emotions, which conducts classes every summer in Indianapolis, Indiana. Here is an example of some of the courses that will be offered this year:

·        Emotion 1001: Scorn and Anger.Instructor: Nick Saban. A brief review of arrogance will also be covered, time permitting.

·        Emotion 2001: Smirks and Disgusted Looks.Instructor: Steve Spurrier. Attendees will start off by learning how to look down and shake their heads in disgust, before moving on to the more difficult and advanced “Steve Spurrier Smirk.” Attendees will also be given hands-on instruction in the art of visor throwing, conducted by the master himself.

·        Emotion 3001: Goofiness.Instructor: Lou Holtz. Retired coaches say the darnedest things!

Three days after the big win, L$U[1] announced that ticket prices would be going up, including the required “donation” to the Tradition Fund. There are probably many L$U fans out there who are wondering, “Hey, isn’t a donation something that you voluntarily give out of the goodness of your heart?”

Give me a break! Do you expect me to devote valuable space in this column to answer a stupid question like that? OK, I will. It all depends on how, legally speaking, you define the word “donation.”

According to the attorney that I have had on retainer ever since I tied him to the toilet in my guest bathroom, Louisiana law is based on the Napoleonic Code, which was the result of Napoleon Bonaparte’s efforts in the early 1800s to codify French law. This Code, which formed the basis of Louisiana’s own Civil Code, began as follows:

“Article 1: No one shall cause himself to appear to be taller than the Emperor while in his presence.”

Having gotten this far on his beloved Code, Napoleon paused to rest. Moments later, he was exiled to the Isle of Elba.

Luckily, Louisiana’s founding fathers took up the torch and augmented Napoleon’s already fine Code to provide for two different types of donations in our own Civil Code:

·        The gratuitous donation: a donation that is given as a pure gratuity, like when you donate blood to the Blood Bank.

·        The onerous donation: a donation in which the donor gets something in return for his donation. This is the type of donation that the L$U Athletic Department is talking about – like when a vampire flies into your window and drains every ounce of blood from your lifeless body, leaving behind an order form for you to buy tickets.

Is Tiger Stadium on the road to becoming a “gated community”? A callous, coldhearted, money machine, where only the wealthy gain admittance?

No! Certainly not! We can’t be on the road to somewhere we already are!

Just look at how tickets for the national championship game were awarded.  L$U used a “point” system. What could be fairer? In this example, using a dollar sign for each point, see if you can guess which fan got to buy tickets:

·        Fan A:      $$$

·        Fan B:      $$$$$

·        Fan C:      $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

If you guessed “Fan A,” I suggest you give up football and spend your Saturday nights watching Lawrence Welkreruns.

In fairness to L$U, it was given only 16,000 tickets, as was Ohio State. That’s only 32,000 of the Superdome’s 70,000 seats. Where did the rest of the tickets go?  We may never get a clear answer to that question. I’m assuming many of those tickets went to low-income families, who sold them on the internet for $2,000 to pay their subprime mortgages.

I realize that running a successful college football program is an expensive enterprise, but… Here we are at the top of the world of college football, Numero Uno, sold-out games, TV exposure galore, people waiting in line at midnight to buy national championship shirts, and if we don’t get lots and lots of money to the Athletic Department right now, we’re gonna be broke! Such is the cost of success.

One of the justifications for the ticket increase is Les Miles’ salary, which will increase from $1.8 million to over $3 million as a result of winning the championship. This is not an extravagance when you consider what corporate executives make in the business world.

Angelo Mozilo, Chairman and CEO of Countrywide Financial Corporation, has made an estimated $387 million in pay and stock option gains from 2002 to 2006, and he could get a severance package estimated to be worth $110 million if a planned merger with Bank of America goes through.  This is despite the fact that, in the past year, Countrywide slid into insolvency, its stock plunged over 80%, and 10,900 of its employees were laid off. If you were using football terminology to describe Mozilo’s last year as a CEO, you’d say he had a losing season, but financially speaking, I’d say he connected on the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of the business world.

Mozilo is expected to retire soon. If he does, the Athletic Department might consider hiring him as a financial consultant. But if they don’t pay Mozilo any more than Miles (a measly $3 million), the most work they should expect to get out of him is a single email, automatically generated by his home computer on an annual basis: “RAISE TICKET PRICES AND ENHANCE MY COMPENSATION PACKAGE IMMEDIATELY!”

I’m no Angelo Mozilo, so these suggestions on how to soften the financial blow of winning the national championship are free of charge:

·        Athletic Scholarships for Fans:  Use a small portion of the “donations” given each year to the Tiger Athletic Foundation to fund special “fan scholarships” to help defray the cost of attending L$U football games. These scholarships would be awarded to needy season ticket holders from the south end zone who have held season tickets, uninterrupted, for at least 30 years, and have appropriate south end zone names, such as “Big Ragu.”

·        Explore Cost-Saving Measures: On the academic side, cut back on the number of professors and make the classes even larger. Is there any good reason why L$U should be offering more than one session of English 1001 when we have a facility as big as Tiger Stadium?

·        Tithing: Give unto God what is God’s, to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to L$U what is L$U’s. Why not try the concept of tithing, which has been used successfully by so many of the major religions for hundreds of years?

Enroll today in the Tiger Payroll Deduction Plan.

[1] The official trademark of the Louisiana State University Athletic Department.