UF-LSU: The Blame Game

Apologies in advance for starting another thread on this, but we're all out of material on this subject, for the moment. There is, however, one big gaping hole that could be filled that might bring this argument to some sort of conclusion, and that is finding out what the discussions were within the Florida AD, and between the AD and government authorities, regarding scheduling possibilities. If I were a pissed off LSU fan with a little time on my hands, I'd figure out the rules for making a Freedom of Information Act request (I'm sure Florida has a FOIA statute), and I would ask for the something like the following:

1. From UF, all correspondence between Jeremy Foley and third parties, or between the president's office and third parties, and perhaps some other key top AD folks, from October 1, forward regarding the impact of Hurrican Matthew on playing the LSU game, rescheduling possibilities, and logistical issues relating thereto, including but not limited to, the availability of law enforcement and emergency services, and the availability, or unavailability of lodging due to evacuees.

2. I'd make the same request to the City of Gainesville.

3. Same request to whatever you call the State of Florida's emergency management agency.

4. Same request to the Florida governor's office.

If you find nothing, then you'll know that Foley was blowing smoke, because if logistics were really impossible, there will be communications from government officials indicating that. At the very least, if Foley is going to rely on that, he would be an idiot not to have gotten some CYA letters from the responsible parties imploring him not to play the game.

On the other hand, if you do find those communications, then you'll see why Sankey really didn't have any leverage over Florida.

Without someone doing that, we're just going to see the same old conjecture repeated over and over and over again. The LSU beat writers probably ought to be doing this, but my experience is that newspapers writers aren't smart enough, or industrious enough, to do this. When all the realignment stuff was going down, there were some individual Aggie fans who made some very timely FOIA requests that supplied lots of ammo for what proved to be a winning PR battle. Same possibilities are present here for someone.