Last Modified: Thursday, October 27, 2011 1:54 PM

BY SCOOTER HOBBS / AMERICAN PRESS

Blame it on today’s hectic-paced, instant-info, social media-driven society. Or maybe simply write it off to too much idle time with a convenient open date before LSU and Alabama square off in the Greatest College Football Armageddon Ever Hyped by Man or Twitter.
Which begets way too much over-analyzing.
But now, it seems, Alabama and LSU fans, who were roundly scolded by their head coaches for looking right past the likes of Auburn and Florida and Tennessee with an eye on their own Greatest SEC Showdown Ever Imagined, are taking a slightly different strategy.
The Tide and Tiger fans — not to mention media and your more innocent bystanders — are now, still more than a week before “November Fifth,” skipping Go, not collecting $200, and looking right past The Showdown itself.
What would Les Miles and Nick Saban think about that, huh?
It’s gotten to the point you have to look past the game you’ve been told not to look ahead to, even if it is The Game to Make Everybody Quit Worrying about Conference Off-Field Musical Chairs (if Only for a Night).
This sounds so deliciously naughty that it surely must be illegal in some states.
I don’t know. But it sure is fun, isn’t it?
Already speculation is rampant about the aftermath of the Titanic Tilt of the Century — precisely what effect it will have on the Bowl Championship Series, the national psyche and possibly the gold and pork belly futures markets.
There’s not much else to do during an open date, especially now that it appears LSU’s Synthetic Trio will be present and accounted for. Besides, LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva seems to be having way too much fun explaining to Tiger fans that the reason they can’t have a night game at home is because, darn the luck and the price of fame, but the football team is just too dang good and all the networks all falling over themselves to hitch their wagon to the Ol’ War Skul.
So the topic of the week has become:
Could it be that the LSU-Alabama game is not just, as widely rumored, a semifinal for the national championship?
Could the LSU-Alabama game be just Round 1?
Could the wheels be in motion, along with the BCS computers, to set up a Tide-Tiger rematch in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome for the actual, bona fide BCS championship in January?
That’s the rumor out there.
As the scenario is being explained, it would likely take the close, knock-down, drag-out game that everybody is expecting, probably with Alabama winning.
An LSU victory, goes the theory, would leave Alabama without much of an argument no matter the margin, having lost in its home stadium.
But the scenario could play out to where it appears that LSU and Alabama are clearly the two best teams in the country.
Some other things would probably have to happen too, but a key element to this puzzle went down when Oklahoma, often mentioned previously in the same breath with Alabama and LSU, lost to Texas Tech.
Stanford would probably have to flounder at some point, Oklahoma (or somebody) might need to beat Oklahoma State and there’s the age-old Boise State question.
But, for instance, if Oregon eventually beats Stanford and wins the first Pac-12 championship game to end up 12-1 and eager to play for the BCS again, does it erase the fact that an LSU team with the same number of losses handled the Ducks fairly easily?
There are philosophical questions here, often pondered by football scholars.
Should a conference championship be a prerequisite for playing for the national title? The BCS’ Founding Fathers were silent on the subject.
At issue is that the loser of the Alabama-LSU game, assuming the rest of the season plays out to form, will not even win its conference division — even though it also might well be the second-best team in the country.
It’s been done, in 2001, when Nebraska finagled its way in despite not even playing for the Big 12 title.
It wasn’t pretty —Miami 37, Nebraska 14.
But it also wasn’t a rematch against a team from its own conference.
That subject was broached in 2006 when it was widely assumed that Michigan and Ohio State were head and shoulders above the rest of the land.
There was talk of doing it all over again no matter who won. It didn’t quite happen after Ohio State won the showdown. And it turned out the Buckeyes had other viable candidates — Florida 41, Ohio State 14 in the BCS title game.
There’s also the matter of if it’s fair for the LSU-Alabama winner to have to beat the same team all over again for all the marbles.
LSU has some experience there.
The Tigers won the SEC Game of the Previous Century with the famous 7-3 victory over an Ole Miss team that was probably better but for a Billy Cannon punt return.
The Rebels got a chance to prove it when the Sugar Bowl couldn’t think of any more original matchup and Ole Miss hammered LSU 21-0 in the rematch.
The Nebraska incident, in particular, sparked cries for the “conference champion” amendment, and it sounds good on paper.
But the reason you don’t overreact and put in a rule based on something unfortunate that happened one year is that, as sure as you do, there will be an exception to it.
Maybe this turns out to be that year.
But it might be prudent to at least let the game play out before getting in a tizzy over it.
Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at shobbs@americanpress.com