...it’s time to evaluate Todd as beefcake material?

You really should do more non-inflammatory posts…

As for your question, I would much rather lose to LSU than either Auburn or Tennessee.

With Tennessee, I think all here know my thoughts on them. Traditionally I have enjoyed the camaraderie of the Third Saturday In October, but after Fulmer’s role in our NCAA mess – where this fat bastard, with some assistance, literally tried to give us the death penalty – those days are long gone. I’m not going to say that it cannot ever go back to the way it was, but it will have to be long after Fulmer is gone. For the recent past and the foreseeable future, this will be the one I want above all others, regardless of any other circumstances surrounding particular games. After all, Auburn fans may be annoying, but they’ve never explicitly tried to destroy our program as a whole.

With Auburn, growing up they were the big rival. I can honestly look back at my childhood days and say that I hated – as much as any kid could – any of my peers who were Auburn fans. As I got older, it was still a big deal but for different reasons. The Auburn people were just so damn obsessed with Alabama and so annoying about it, you just prayed that you’d win the Iron Bowl, if but for nothing more than to shut them up for a short while. But once I moved out of state you simply didn’t deal any more with Auburn people on a regular basis, so it all became a moot point. I still want to beat them, of course, but it’s certainly not the same if you don’t have to live with them. It’s important for recruiting purposes to beat them, generally speaking, and because of longstanding rivalry, but that’s it for me. I think you really have to live in the state of Alabama to get the most of the rivalry.

With LSU, they’ve really just never been on my radar screen. Prior to 2000, we absolutely dominated the series, and it just wasn’t a big deal. Sure we lost occasionally to them, but in most of the years we lost to LSU we had much bigger problems than just losing that one game (see ‘69, ‘70, ‘84, ‘97, ‘00, etc.). There was really just no major interaction with the programs, so it was a moot point. And it honestly still is that way for me. The last few losses have been very painful – losing leads late, at home, in 2005 and 2007, and I still think we win in 2004 if the proper call is made on the pass interference in the end zone on Keith Brown – but those things happen, and honestly as good as LSU has been since Saban arrived, it’s not exactly a shame to be losing to teams that are of such high quality (especially considering how we’ve struggled). I know the LSU people have been obsessed with us because of our historical dominance in the series and all of the recent Saban stuff, but I see no reason to make that a two way street.

For me, it’s Tennessee, then Auburn, and LSU is basically just mixed in with the rest of the schools. They probably get slightly more importance right now because that game is going to have SEC West implications, but even so that’s a practical reality more than any underlying rivalry issue.