Rosetta: LSU comes alive without football

• By RANDY ROSETTA
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Sep 6, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Life goes on, so sports goes on.

Because sports go on, there will be LSU football again.

Soon enough.

Maybe not soon enough for everybody’s liking, and maybe not in the normal venue.

But LSU football will certainly go on and retake its place at the center of the universe for an awful lot of people. Including a city and region that, right now, needs anything to hold onto they can get right now.

Hopefully, though, what we (trust me, every employee of The Advocate has walked in your shoes this week) have all been through this week puts everything, including LSU football, into a little more perspective.

Les Miles has learned to look at things differently — as a result of this week and what he and the Tigers went through in 2005.

Or maybe it’s just the kind of man Miles is that he found a silver lining in sharing the LSU football operations building with a large extended family this week.

As Hurricane Gustav began unloading its fury on Baton Rouge on Monday and houses around the city lost power, the Tigers coaches weren’t spared.

So when the storm calmed down enough, every assistant brought his family to the football ops building to wait out however long it was going to take to restore electricity.

With a coaching staff of nine assistants, their spouses and an army of young ones added to the six-person Miles clan, the grand total of humanity added up to a noisy few days at the LSU corral.

Miles shared a story about a sinking air mattress shared with Kathy Miles and 5-year-old Macy Grace.

“All of our staff kids have become great friends because we all live in the football operations building — with no sleep curfew,” Miles said. “It’s been a big sleepover.