(Flickr, Shoshanah)

It is football season, which means it’s time for me to block off every Saturday night for a ritual of alternately screaming at the TV and feasting. I love football of any type, but I am an LSU fan first and foremost. I have loved LSU since I stepped onto the campus on a visit at 17,  nearly suffocated in the humidity, and felt exactly at home. Of course that love inevitably extended to football.

My freshman year was Gerry DiNardo’s last. So, I’m not some privileged brat who has only seen her team compete for conference championships (ahem … Gators). I have suffered. Trust me. Then, I got to watch my Tigers  earn two national titles (in the ugliest possible fashion), and I got accustomed to, well, winning.

But, one of the unique benefits of being a Tiger fan is that games are always way too exciting. We cannot win a game without making it close. We cannot lose a game without being within a frog’s hair of winning it all. I have seen maybe three LSU games in the past five years in which we played consistently and won solidly, and two of them were Tulane games, which we all know shouldn’t count. Tonight’s fourth-quarter horror show was just more of the same.

I used to cope with the ups and downs of LSU football like other Tiger fans, by eating a bellyful of jambalaya and getting completely ripped on bourbon or beer or some unholy combination thereof. Turns out, if you’re barely conscious for a horrible performance, it’s a lot less painful. And, if you do it right, you can pass out after the game and not have to wake up to eat again until Sunday afternoon. Alas, it turns out that  Louisiana levels of boozing do not hold in other societies. Shocking, I know. So, these days I cope with jambalaya alone.

As you have probably noticed, God loves to screw with Louisiana, and that includes our sports teams. Louisianans live in an infinite Catholic loop of miracles and penances. And, anyone who loves Louisiana kind of secretly loves it, because it means God obviously cares about us most. (We’re also pretty sure that he likes to party.) The unofficial Louisiana motto is “Laissez les bons temps rouler” for a reason. Louisianans are certain that the good times will eventually stop rolling, so it is their mission to allow them to roll unimpeded as long as possible.

So, I am buckling down for the excitement of the inevitable Old Testament plague of interceptions and penalties and close calls and the New Testament redemption of last-minute receptions, Pick-6′s and kickoff returns for TDs that occurs every LSU football season. And, I am hoping that they occur in that order. I have enough andouille in the freezer to make jambalaya for the entire block, and I know that delicious sausage will see me through the good times and the bad. And, if this season goes the way of the second half of tonight’s game, well, hell, there’s always the Saints …

EDIT: My friend Kathy points out that I am giving the Gators short shrift by not acknowledging the tragic Zook years and the post-Wuerffel era. Fine. Whatever. WE’VE ALL SUFFERED.