What's Les smoking?

At today's weekly press luncheon in Baton Rouge, LSU coach Les Miles said, "If we improve and beat the teams that we are capable of beating, I'd like to put ourselves in position to play Arkansas at the end of the year and maybe play them for more than just The Boot.''

Uh, Les, have you checked the SEC standings lately.

Not only is LSU a game back of Auburn, now the Tigers are TWO games back of Arkansas in the loss column.

That's right, what looked like a two-team race with LSU and Auburn now has some company in Arkansas.

It's not out of the realm of reality for this LSU team to finish in third or even fourth place in the SEC West.

If past history is any indication, LSU is done as far as the SEC is concerned. Here is the conference loss total of your last three SEC West champions: 2005 LSU (1 loss); 2004 Auburn (0 losses); 2003 LSU (1 loss). I don't see any two loss teams going to Atlanta in that bunch.

Here is what Miles should have said: "We're 4-2 and 1-2 in the conference. We need to get better each and every week. We're going to do that this week against Kentucky. We'll see at the end of the year where that takes us.''

Because trying to sell this pipe dream of going to Atlanta is going to do more harm than good. Just telling the truth would serve the program better.