Will He Stay or Will He Go?

ATLANTA — Will Les Miles stay or will he go if offered the head coaching job at his alma mater Michigan?

The talk over Miles’ future at LSU continues to dominate conversation on the eve of Saturday’s SEC Championship Game between the No. 5-ranked Tigers (10-2) and No. 14 Tennessee (9-3).

LSU officials confirmed Wednesday that Michigan Athletic Director Bill Martin asked for permission to speak to Miles about Michigan’s coaching vacancy. LSU granted Martin’s request on the condition that Michigan officials not speak with Miles until after Saturday’s game.

No date has been set for the Michigan meeting. LSU Athletic Director Skip Bertman said Thursday he expects to talk with Miles about his future with LSU after the team returns from Atlanta.

“The first thing we want to do is let the game get played,” Bertman said, “and then the first thing Monday we want to see if we can begin the process from our end.”

One member of the LSU Board of Supervisors, Chairman Jerry Shea of New Iberia, said he spoke to Miles last week and that Miles told him that he wants to stay at LSU.

“I would like to see him stay and I think he’s going to stay,” Shea said.

Fellow board member Louis Lambert of Prairieville was less optimistic.

“I hope he stays,” Lambert said, “but I’m not sure based on what I read and what I see. But I hope he stays.”

Shea said he expects the Miles matter to be wrapped up early next week, and that a quick resolution was important to the health of LSU’s football program.

“Everybody wants it to happen sooner than later,” Shea said. “It’s affecting recruiting, the players, the coaches — it’s affecting everybody.”

Shea also said the university and the athletic department have contingency plans if Miles does leave, but would not elaborate on what those are.

“I hope they don’t have to use it,” he said.

Bertman said he met in Baton Rouge recently with Miles’ Dallas-based agent, George Bass.

“I had spoken to George awhile back,” Bertman said. “The chancellor (Sean O’Keefe) called Les to tell him how much the university wants him to stay and I relayed that information to George. He (Bass) said he wanted to come down here anyway and meet.

“No money figures were thrown around, but we did talk about the fact that Les’s contract has performance clauses in it and we all agreed that we want him to stay regardless of the outcome of a single football game. This is not about waiting to see if we win this game or not.”

Bertman said Bass couldn’t act on anything on Miles’ behalf because of the timing of their meeting.

“I didn’t want to bother him (Miles) this week anymore than I want Michigan to bother him this week,” Bertman said. Attempts to reach Bass on Thursday were unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini continues to rank as one of the top candidates to replace the ousted Bill Callahan as head coach at Nebraska. Pelini reportedly interviewed Sunday with interim Nebraska athletic director and football coach Tom Osborne.

Pelini, who was defensive coordinator at Nebraska in 2003 and served as its interim head coach for an Alamo Bowl victory over Michigan, has declined to speak publicly or issue a statement regarding the Nebraska job.

Thursday, LSU sports information director Michael Bonnette said Pelini told him: “His focus is squarely on this team and doing whatever he can to get our defense ready to play on Saturday. There’s nothing else on his mind other than LSU football and getting ready for Tennessee.”

Bonnette said Pelini has been at practice every day this week (practices have been closed to the media) and that he will coach in Saturday’s game.

Check out the article at The Advocate.

Well, last Friday's loss to Arkansas really put a damper on the Thanksgiving weekend. I'm disappointed that we couldn't pull out the National Championship season, but that does not at all take away from the amount of pride I have in this team! These guys have been playing their hearts out and I won't take anything away from them. Besides, it is true that there isn't a team in the country who has beaten as many ranked teams... not to mention, there isn't another team in the country that can claim their only losses came in triple overtime!

Here's to success in the SEC Championship Game and whatever Bowl we play in. Hey, you never know... a miracle could happen and we could still get in the NC game!

Check out this quote from LSU coach Les Miles:

“I’ve thought about how this season has gone. Certainly we would like to have the last game back. We understand what that has cost us in our national ranking and what it means. Right now, I would like to talk about what we are, and not what we just lost. What we are is one hell of a football team. I like our team, especially the character of our team. If you think about this football team, we have not been healthy since the first game of the year. Yet, no matter who we call on to go in and make plays, they make plays.”

“This team has not lost a game in regulation. I know it does not mean much to you guys (media.) The point is, in a 60 minutes game, we play as competitive as we can be. There is not a team that we have played that has bested us in the first 60 minutes. If you had to look at the length and width of the game, that is how it is measured. Then you go to overtime, and I think our overtime system is just as flawed as any other overtime system. It’s just the way it is and it is probably correct. You have to decide it then where it takes the length of the field and certain situations out of it. It is imperfect, but a darn good system. You tell me if there are other teams in this country that can say that. If you just give us ties, like in the old system, we are undefeated with two ties. Maybe that adds up as one lost.”

“Go find a team that has losses that only came in overtime. Go find a team that compares competitively with five nationally-ranked teams and has done extremely well. I am talking about our team and what we can be, not what we just lost. I think our best football is coming. I haven’t talked to my team yet today, but I can say this – there is too much character on this team not to understand that 10 wins, third-straight time at this school, has not been done before, is special.”

Check out the full transcript at LSU Sports.

Geaux Tigers!!!

Go to Hell Ole Miss!

BATON ROUGE -- There will be a lot on the line Saturday when top-ranked LSU travels to face Ole Miss in Oxford. The Tigers go into their clash with Ole Miss with the opportunity to not only capture the school’s first outright Southeastern Conference Western Division title, but to also strengthen its hold on then nation’s No. 1 ranking.

The Tigers and Rebels renew their annual rivalry at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. The game will be televised nationally on CBS. LSU brings a 9-1 overall mark and a 5-1 league record into the game, while the Rebels are winless in SEC action this year, sporting an 0-6 mark. Ole Miss is 3-7 overall.

LSU has won five straight and six of the last season over the Rebels, including last year’s 23-20 overtime thriller in Baton Rouge. In that game, the Tigers came from 13 points down in the fourth quarter to force overtime, where they eventually won.

Despite Ole Miss winning only three games this year, LSU coach Les Miles expects another very competitive game with the Rebels. Four of the last five games between the teams have been decided by a total of 10 points.

“We are expecting their best shot and we don’t anticipate getting anything less than that,” LSU coach Les Miles said. “We’ve had a good week of preparation, both on the field as well as in the meeting rooms. We understand that that we are going on the road to play an SEC game and that we have to bring our best effort in order to be successful.”

Also on LSU’s side is the fact that the Tigers can now strengthen their grip on the nation’s top ranking after second-ranked Oregon dropped a stunner to unranked Arizona on Thursday night. Outside of LSU, the Ducks had more first place votes than any of the other contenders in last week’s polls.

With a win over the Rebels, the Tigers can also clinch their first outright SEC Western Division title. Prior to this season, LSU has shared the league title on six occasions, winning the tiebreaker and advancing to the league’s championship game three times – 2001, ’03, and ’05.

With all that being said, Miles and the Tigers are still focused on one thing, and that’s playing well against the Rebels.

A victory over Ole Miss will also give the Tigers their 10th victory this season, running LSU’s streak to three consecutive years with double-figure victories. LSU won 11 games in both 2005 and 2006. A third straight season with at least 10 victories will have LSU join Alabama, Georgia Tennessee and Florida as the only teams in SEC history to accomplish that feat.

Offensively, the Tigers bring a unit into the Ole Miss game that has been clicking on all cylinders in recent weeks, scoring 41 points against Alabama and following that with 58 against Louisiana Tech. LSU, which has scored at least 28 points in every game this year, is averaging 39 points per game and a league-leading 455 yards per contest.

Quarterback Matt Flynn has tossed three touchdowns in three straight games and has run his season totals to 1,856 passing yards and 14 touchdowns. Running back Jacob Hester continues to lead the Tigers in rushing with 706 yards and eight scores. Hester has also caught 11 passes for 87 yards and one touchdown.

The return of Early Doucet, along with the emergence of Demetrius Byrd and Terrance Toliver, has bolstered LSU’s passing game. Sophomore Brandon LaFell leads the Tigers with 39 catches for 535 yards and two scores, while Doucet has 30 receptions for 335 and four scores. Byrd, a junior college transfer in his first year with the Tigers, has 22 catches for a team-best 464 yards and four TDs.

Defensively, the Tigers continue to rely on the tone set by its defensive front, in particular defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey. As a unit, LSU is ranked among the top 10 in the nation in five categories, which includes leading the country in total defense with 236.8 yards per game. LSU is also No. 3 in rushing defense at 66.0 yards per game, No. 6 in pass defense at 170.8 yards per game and 10th in scoring at 16.7 points per contest.

Safety Craig Steltz leads the Tigers in tackles with 68, while linebacker Ali Highsmith is second on the squad with 60 stops. Dorsey, along with Kirston Pittman, lead the Tigers in both tackles for losses (11.5) and sacks (6).

After Saturday, the Tigers will have a short week to close out the regular season as they host Arkansas at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 23.

Check out the article at LSU Sports.

Geaux Tigers!!!

GO TO HELL OLE MISS!

Earth-rise in HD!

The original Earth-rise - taken by William Anders
during the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon on December 24, 1968.

A Japanese moon probe has replicated the famous Apollo-era "Earth-rise" photograph with modern high-definition imaging.

The Kaguya spacecraft, also called Selene, has been orbiting 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the moon since Oct. 18.

The new Earth-rise image shows our blue world floating in the blackness of space. It is a still shot taken from video made by the craft's high-definition television (HDTV) for space.

A second image, taken from a different location in the lunar orbit, has been dubbed Earth-set. A related series of still images shows our planet setting beyond the lunar horizon.

In the Earth-set image, Earth appears upside-down; visible are Australia and Asia. A region near the moon's south pole is seen in the foreground.

The footage was taken Nov. 7 using equipment provided by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK).

The orbiter mission is run by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Its first high-definition videos of Earth were sent back last month. The mission objectives are to obtain scientific data on the origin and evolution of the moon and to develop the technology for future lunar exploration.

Check out the article at Space.com.

Awesome images... I want to get my hands on that video! Congrats to JAXA on a successful mission, and thanks for sharing!

Veterans Day 2007

World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” - officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…"

Check out the article at Department of Veteran Affairs website.

Never forget our veterans... past, present or future!

Check out the Veterans Day Wiki page.

Spy-Bugs!

Ever wish you could be a "fly on the wall" at a closed-door meeting or to hear a foe’s secrets?

Enter the robobug.

Witnesses are buzzing about recent sightings of robotic-looking dragonflies seen at Washington and New York political events. And U.S. government and private agencies have admitted to striving for the spy technology, The Washington Post reports, though no one has confessed to deploying the bugged bugs.

Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "

That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Others think they are, well, dragonflies -- an ancient order of insects that even biologists concede look about as robotic as a living creature can look.

No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones. But a number of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying. Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely.

The robobugs could follow suspects, guide missiles to targets or navigate the crannies of collapsed buildings to find survivors.

The technical challenges of creating robotic insects are daunting, and most experts doubt that fully working models exist yet.

"If you find something, let me know," said Gary Anderson of the Defense Department's Rapid Reaction Technology Office.

But the CIA secretly developed a simple dragonfly snooper as long ago as the 1970s. And given recent advances, even skeptics say there is always a chance that some agency has quietly managed to make something operational.

"America can be pretty sneaky," said Tom Ehrhard, a retired Air Force colonel and expert in unmanned aerial vehicles who is now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit Washington-based research institute.

Robotic fliers have been used by the military since World War II, but in the past decade their numbers and level of sophistication have increased enormously. Defense Department documents describe nearly 100 different models in use today, some as tiny as birds, and some the size of small planes.

All told, the nation's fleet of flying robots logged more than 160,000 flight hours last year -- a more than fourfold increase since 2003. A recent report by the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College warned that if traffic rules are not clarified soon, the glut of unmanned vehicles "could render military airspace chaotic and potentially dangerous."

But getting from bird size to bug size is not a simple matter of making everything smaller.

Check out the article at Fox News or the original article at The Washington post.

Cool, I could use a few of those!

Seriously, let's just hope that these things don't get in the wrong hands... yeah, like they aren't already.

Just imagine how good the New England Patriots would be if Bill Belichick got his hands on one of those spybugs!

Check out this interesting Spybug article I found at How Stuff Works.

Beat Saban!!!

Around the Bowl and Down the Hole... Roll Tide Roll!

Most LSU fans have been waiting for this week ever since last winter, when their former coach, Nick Saban, accepted the head job at Alabama.

They have followed his every move leading up to Saturday's game in Tuscaloosa, which has been unofficially labeled "The Saban Bowl." They still are struggling to understand how he could abandon them.

Saban coached the Tigers to a pair of SEC titles and a share of the 2003 national championship and stockpiled the program with NFL-caliber talent before leaving for the Miami Dolphins. Then, after just two seasons with the Dolphins, he resurfaced at a bitter conference rival, signing a multi-year deal with Alabama worth $4million per season.

Les Miles is an impressive 29-5 in three years at LSU. He has coached the Tigers to the No.3 slot in the weekly BCS standings. If LSU (7-1, 4-1 SEC) wins out and second-ranked Boston College stumbles, the Tigers are poised to play for another national title in nearby New Orleans.

Interestingly, if Miles were to leave for Michigan, his alma mater, at the end of the season, it is hard to tell how many rabid LSU boosters would miss him. It seems not everyone is completely sold on Miles after he risked a potentially special season by going for a touchdown from the 22-yard line in the final seconds of a 30-24 win over Auburn instead of just playing it safe, calling a timeout and going for the game-winning field goal.

Saban is a more complicated story.

He developed a cult following down in the Bayou after he rebuilt an LSU program that was wallowing in the swamps with eight losing seasons in the 11 years before he arrived. Then he broke a lot of hearts. Now, his team is coming off a 41-17 victory over Tennessee two weeks ago and, in his first year on the job, he has the 17th-ranked Tide (6-2, 4-1) in position to win the West and make its first trip to the SEC title game since 1999.

It's all too much for some LSU fans, who seem desperate to see Miles beat Saban, if only to wipe out the giant shadow he still casts over Baton Rouge and show that any capable coach can succeed at this program.

Saban and Miles have spent this week repeating the same mantra, that this game is not personal between the coaches.

"I don't know what people are saying," Saban said. "I don't know what's going on out there, but I know you guys are busy creating. Unfortunately, I'm not interested in trying to be part of it."

That might be true today, but just a day after LSU thumped Notre Dame, 41-14, in the 2007 Sugar Bowl, Saban, who recruited 17 current LSU starters, did bring up the fact he recruited most of the players on that team, and he happened to mention at the SEC media day over the summer that after he left for the Dolphins, one of his administrative assistants had her tires slashed when she returned to Baton Rouge for a wedding.

Miles may have opened a window to his soul last winter, too, when he suggested to a booster club that the Tigers enjoyed playing Florida but had a new rival in "--- Alabama," then told another club that he hated the color red. "Ohio State, Indiana. When I was with the Cowboys, it was the Redskins," he said. "I look forward to going back to my roots and kicking the crap out of a team in red."

Check out the article at NY Daily News.

Finally, the time has come... what we have been waiting for all year... it's time to BEAT SABAN! I want to see him screaming at everyone until he's red in the face!!!

Check out the Geaux Tigers, Beat Bama! song on David St. Romain's MySpace page!!! Sung to the tune of Sweet Home Alabama, of course! Great song, David!

Geaux Tigers!!!