Tebow or no Tebow, LSU’s crank-call tradition must go on

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October 6, 2009

Before LSU’s cataclysmic game with Florida in 2007, Tiger fans infamously flooded Tim Tebow’s phone with texts and messages warning him of what awaited in Baton Rouge, which — after an epic struggle that Florida led almost from start to finish — was a last-second loss that fueled the Tigers’ run to a national championship. Encouraged, the crank-calling heauxligans went back to the well last year, pestering Georgia’s Knowshon Moreno and Alabama quarterback John Parker Wilson before their respective dates to Tiger Stadium, both of which ended in LSU losses complete with a little comeuppance from their targets. (Since unsportsmanlike calls involving LSU and Georgia are such a hot topic this week, note that Wilson’s "Call Me" pose following a ‘Bama touchdown was flagged; Moreno’s was not.)

Win or lose, though, in the SEC, you don’t mess with tradition. And if the starting quarterback is still looking iffy to play, you do what you gotta do — go right for his backup’s phone:

This time, [LSU fans have] gotten hold of the cell phone numbers of No. 2 quarterback John Brantley and starting wide receiver Riley Cooper, and they’re wearing out their thumbs sending text messages to the two Florida players.

"They’ve left a bunch of them," Brantley said Monday. "There haven’t been any death threats or anything. I just ignore them."

Brantley said he also thinks the LSU students have Urban Meyer’s cell phone number. "Supposedly so," Brantley said.

I haven’t checked them, but if the digits that landed in my inbox Monday night purporting to belong to Meyer and Cooper are correct, then definitely so. (They came from an Ole Miss fan, ironically enough, albeit one with solid LSU connects.) Offensive coordinator Steve Adazio’s number is reportedly in enemy hands, as well. The numbers are flying around LSU circles so rapidly that the biggest Tiger message boards have had to prohibit them from even being posted. (Though at least a few purple and gold partisans smell a conspiracy.)

So what happens to this burgeoning tradition if Brantley plays (and it looks increasingly likely that he will) and comes out of one of the most hostile environments in sports — Tiger Stadium on a Saturday night, etc. — with a win in his first career start, driving the big-game crank-call record to 1-3? It may be bad juju, but once you’ve unleashed a beast with the ferocity of the more adolescent segments of LSU’s fan base, it’s hard to get it back in its cage.