Which team’s chances? LSU? Oh, that’s me! Ha!

Les Miles actual dialogue, as best remembered from one viewing, during his post-game interview with Holly Rowe following LSU’s eschewing of a field goal and all reason in their 30-24 victory over Auburn Saturday.

Holly: Tell us about that last call, Coach.

Les: (Pauses, looks blankly at her.) Which call?

Holly: (Dumbfounded.) The touchdown call to win the game. Tell us a little about that.

Les: Oh, that call. Sure. It’s because, where other men have brains, I just have more balls. Just a skull full of testes–that’s what you’ll see if you take an MRI of my head, actually. It’s like looking at an x-ray of a beanbag in profile when you look at my head. I jostle when I walk. Why? It’s the balls jangling and boinging around in my head. Don’t ask me if it’s awesome. There’s no brains up there, only balls. And balls always have the same answer to that question: it’s awesome having a brain full of balls like Les Miles does. It sounds awesome when I say that, actually. Balls. BALLS BALLS BALLS BALLS BALLS. That’s it in short, Balls.

Holly: It’s Holly.

Miles: Balls, balls. Balls.

If one needs any further confirmation that Les Miles has no idea what he’s talking about, take this as the last and best pieces of evidence.

First, Miles claims that they still had a time out, not realizing the clock had run down to one second, and that with one more hitch or qb scramble, the clock would have run dry and bled out any chances LSU would have had of winning, unburned timeout or not. Miles would have been introduced as a plaything for Mike VI as punishment, and we’d be writing this great piece we would have wept during the composition of about how Auburn was the greatest, most balanced team in the anarchic SEC West.

Second, they claim Byrd hadn’t been covered all night, and that they knew they could hit it. D.J. Hall went uncovered on Saturday, catching 13 balls against Tennessee for Alabama. This is someone uncovered all night who you could throw to with mathematical certainty. Byrd had two solid receptions, but it wasn’t an Easy Button transaction for the td. It constituted an immense gamble, one done when a simple field goal could have won the game.

Third, we let the crowd speak. Mike Patrick, while denying the killing urges of the “voices in his head” (he described Tiger Stadium as so loud he couldn’t hear the voices in his head, giving us a flash of the daily madness swirling in his mind) invoked the seismograph game, but got no thunder. While the crowd was loud, at least 30,000 fans seemed too stunned to believe what they’d seen and sat in meek, catatonic silence, cutting down on measurable vibrations at the lab. And not that fun, recreational taser-use stunned, either: a genuine, flabbergasted horrified kind of stunned set in, with most Tiger fans relieved not only to win, but to survive Mr. Toad’s absurdly hazardous driving.