Were these men separated at birth?

The similarities are striking. The same nose, the same beady, squinty eyes, they even have the same stupid smirk on their faces. But it goes beyond that. Those of us who are old enough to remember the political career of George W. Bush will recall that among his "strengths" in that arena was his ability to appeal to average American idiot everymen (everysman? everymans?) as one of them. Bush supporters would frequently concede that the man may not be the world's most accomplished policy wonk, or representative of anyone's ideal of intellect or even competence, but that wasn't the point. The point for many Bush voters was that this was a man they could relate to; someone they wanted to have a beer with. And even if you didn't support him, what American can honestly say that he wasn't a little inspired by the concept that if George Bush could lazily fail upward all the way to the White House, wasn't there hope for all of our bumbling, slacking lives as well?

Spencer Hall finds a similar example in Les Miles' football team.

WHY LSU IS A BETTER NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP CONTENDER THAN ALABAMA: THEY'RE JUST LIKE YOU.

Just watch Alabama and stand in awe of their fearsome symmetries: their pinpoint precision with defensive assignments, their power run game coupled with an efficient and devious passing game, their locked-up special teams coverage. Alabama's pants are pressed to a fine crease, their hair styled to a fine edge, their ties knotted with a precision Germans would find intimidating. They write thank you notes with immaculate penmanship, and never forget their mother's birthdays.

This is not you, most likely. You forget things. You mismanage the clock, and often find yourself scrambling at the end of the day just to get the most basic assigned tasks done. You probably have a stain right now on your pants, and it's probably food, you disgusting pig of a person. You don't drive with your hands at ten and two on the wheel, and most likely sometimes hit the rumble stripes while looking at an interesting bird or shapely lady walking down the street. Honestly, sometimes you do it just because you're thinking about bacon or something. It's amazing you haven't killed anyone yet.

You're a lot closer as a person to being the LSU football team than you are to being the Alabama Crimson Tide, because admit it: sometimes, despite the bad snaps you've made in life, you're ahead of a lot of the plodding dullards who insist on showing up "on time" and "clean shaven" and "totally sober" to their required appointments in life. Sometimes that's been part of the fun, something you can only admit to yourself after you've run around with your hair on fire, broken several major rules of company accounting and best practices, and possibly stabbed a fellow employee in order to get done what you needed to get done to survive.

What Hall is saying is that LSU football under Les Miles is Homer Simpson. Dumb as all hell but somehow it all works out. And who doesn't love Homer Simpson, right? We've devoted a lot of Yellow Blog space over the years to the Fire Miles campaign. But the terrifying truth is by not acting early, as I had recommended, we've now crossed a threshold beyond which dropping Les is only going to do more damage to the Tigers' program than just closing our eyes and hanging on for dear life.

And that's what we're planning to do in about an hour from now when I'm pretty sure LSU is going to beat Florida. How? Well, after watching the way the Tennessee game ended last week, I had a revelation.

Miles' uber-stupid is the Tigers' secret weapon. Tennessee had too many people on the field because they were as dumbfounded as everyone else in the building as to what the hell LSU was doing. As an opposing coach, you know Miles is going to do something comically, spectacularly idiotic at some point in the game. How do you prepare your team for that?

You know Urban Meyer has been driving himself nuts all week trying to figure a way to get his team ready to handle Miles' unpredictable crazy bomb. Is there a practice drill wherein Meyer suddenly runs onto the field in a gorilla suit and passes out cupcakes with sprinkles to everyone? Has he been sneaking up on players and yelling "boo!" at random all week? Would any of this make any difference? Sooner or later today Miles is going to drop the mighty hammer of crazy stupid at some point and the Gators cannot possibly be ready for it.

Meanwhile, in keeping with our characteristic mismanagement of the clock, here are last week's Saints-Panthers notes submitted at the last possible second.

• Pinkwashing is back: As we noted earlier in the week, the NFL is once again participating in National Brand Your Product With Cancer Victims Sympathy Month. Last year we discussed the perils of Pinkwashing at length. This year, we'll offer only the following three observations.
  
  1) The pink accessories matched well with the Panthers' powder blue jersies. Someone remarked to me that they looked like they were dressed for a baby shower.
  
  2) Rosalind has frequently remarked in the past that Saints' kicker 46 Year Old John Carney looks like a chemo patient. How could the Saints not bring him back for Cancer Month?
  
  3) The pink gloves are obviously faulty.
  



• #Iamnotworried about losing to a team with Jimmy Clausen at quarterback The Saints benefited from facing a rookie QB last week. Clausen (11 for 21 146 yds) made several mental errors that worked out to the Saints' advantage. He failed to recognize coverage mismatches. He demonstrated a Les Miles-like capacity for mismanagement resulting in wasted timeouts. The Saints will face another rookie QB in Arizona tomorrow. It's the greatest luxury in pro football.



• Sedrick Ellis is a monster Hey is anybody on the team playing better football than Sedrick Ellis right now? (Other than Morstead, of course) Ellis disrupts plays, bats passes down, sacks quarterbacks, does really stupid looking dances. What's not to like?
  
  
  Ellis bats down a Clausen pass here making the best use of his goofy pink gloves



• Who the hell are these guys? The Saints entered the game with three running backs on the active roster none of who played a down for them a year ago. On the Saints' first possession, this led to some nasty flashbacks for fans as Sean Payton called several exotic reverses hoping to manufacture a running game. Robert Meachem took a couple of these and looked slow. We wondered if he was injured. Tight end Jimmy Graham even took one. Saints fans hurriedly checked their programs or their phone apps or whatever trying to figure out just who the hell numbers 80 and 46 were. 46 was Ladell Betts who had a very nice game, by the way. 13 carries 47 yards 4 receptions for 23. Modest numbers, maybe, but productive. Combining Betts' numbers with Ironbutt Ivory's adds up to 25 carries for 114 yards. All in all not a bad day. A few turnovers ended up obscuring the Saints' best performance of the season offensively highlighted by a strong commitment to the running game which is something we always like to see.
  
  
  Betts wasn't flashy but he ran with a furious energy against Carolina. Maybe the pink stuff made him angry.



• End of the First Possession Juggernaut: The Saints took the ball over for the first time in this game on their own 9 yard line and very nearly drove all the way down the field for what would have been their fourth consecutive opening drive touchdown this season. In the fourth quarter, the Saints took possession on their own 7 and drove 86 yards in 18 plays to set up the go-ahead field goal. Did we mention this was a good day for the offense? Had it not been for a few turnovers such as the one that killed the first drive on the Panters' 2, the score in this game wouldn't have been close.
  
  
  Lance Moore fumbles near the Carolina goal line. Moore went on to score the Saints' only touchdown of the day. Fantasy football geniuses across America picked up Moore the day Reggie Bush got hurt.




• Powder Blue Bullies: The Saints' offensive line turned in a pretty shitty performance all things considered. Sure the Saints moved the ball on the ground, but I can recall more than a few instances of linemen missing blocks that could have sprung backs for longer gains. Plus the Panthers were allowed to beat the crap out of Brees for most of the afternoon which is never a good idea. Menckles says she has spotted Brees "kicking his knee out" a few times as if it were bothering him. (Menckles knows knee pain. This week we learned she's going to need arthroscopic surgery to clean up a medial meniscus tear. She hopes to be back in action before Tracy Porter is.)
  
  
  Brees: 33 of 48 275 yards 1 touchdown Without checking, I think this was his first game under 70% completions all season.




• Uh Oh the kicker doesn't suck. Now what? 46 Year Old John Carney was the man. He hit from 25 yards once and 32 yards twice. Note that the two 32 yard kicks are three yards longer than the one Garrett Hartley missed in overtime vs Atlanta. Both kickers remain on the roster for some reason.
  
  
  Garrett Hartley (pink hat worn backwards) This is the reason we had to release Arrington.



• This week's Dome complaint: I made the mistake of staying to watch the Tiger band play at halftime after which I went and got myself stuck in the longest pee line ever. Seriously, I left with two minutes left in the halftime and didn't get back until there were two minutes left in the third quarter. The good news is I didn't have to watch DeAngelo Williams' 39 yard touchdown run. The.. um.. so-so news is that I got to watch a giant fleur-de-lis play the Crunk song to an enthusiastic crowd.
  
  
  
  But man I am not getting stuck in that line again for anything.



• Still thinking Jeremey Shockey is about done: Want to know the crucial difference between Poochie and Dave Thomas? Thomas is the one who doesn't immediately fall down when he catches the ball.



• This week's fan complaint: During the third quarter, the Saints faced a third and twenty which they failed to convert on a incomplete pass. The score was 14-10 with plenty time left. A smattering of boos issued forth from the Superdome stands. I'm not usually one to come out against fans expressing themselves but, simply put, Saints fans are not allowed to boo their defending Super Bowl Champions this season... particularly not for minor setbacks such as failing to convert 3rd and 20. I never thought I'd live long enough to see the day where people were expecting perfection from Saints football and goofy entertainment from the LSU squad. But these are the crazy times we live in. Besides I thought I was supposed to be the cranky one here. I was embarrassed for everybody in the building.



• Why don't you boo after 3rd and 20? It means Thomas Morstead is coming on the field: While some Saints fans were still booing, Morstead booted the ball 50 yards to the adorably named Captain Munnerlyn who became the third Saints opponent in as many weeks to cough up a fumble on a punt return late in the game. The Morstead Magic Punt-fumble is the Saints' bread and butter this year. The turnover led to a Saints field goal... which the fans also booed but which also became the difference in the game.
  
  
  Notice that Morstead has no pink evident in the uniform he's wearing.

So I started working on this post about an hour and a half before the LSU game kicked off and now it's a few minutes after I've apparently called the outcome thanks, in part, to an insane over-the-shoulder bounce pass to the kicker. Don't ask. It's Les Miles. Anyway I think that means it's time to quit while we're ahead. Saints have a good chance to put things together tomorrow and calm their restless fans. Which is good because I don't want to hear any more boos when they get back to the Dome in a few weeks.