Does Miles know what he faces?

By CARL DUBOIS

Two months. That's how much time remains before we see, for sure, if the west-side upper deck of Tiger Stadium is ready for the LSU football season opener. What will be habitable first? The upper deck, the new football operations facility, or Mike the Tiger's habitat? Your guess is as bad as mine.

Two months. That's when Les Miles coaches his first football game at LSU. Do you suppose he has any idea what he is getting himself into? I don't. Think about the legacy Smoke Laval inherited from Skip Bertman. Five baseball national championships in 10 years. Tremendous, but it's not LSU football, after all.

Nick Saban won one national championship -- and two Southeastern Conference championships -- in five seasons. The 2003 BCS title was LSU's first football national championship in 45 years.

There are those who might disagree, but Saban leaves Miles with a tougher act to follow, a higher set of expectations, a more loaded cupboard, than Bertman left Laval. That's because LSU baseball is a fun spring diversion, not a year-round religion like LSU football.

LSU baseball appeared on most people's radars in the early 1990s. Some discovered it in the 1980s, when Bertman came to LSU from Miami.

LSU football isn't on the radar in these parts; rather, it is the radar, the Mac-Daddy Doppler.

LSU season tickets have been in families for generations, not a mere decade or two. Fans squeezed 45 years of stories, wishes, dreams and frustrations out of the 1958 national championship, and there's no telling the mileage they will get out of 2003.

Some imposed a one-year limit on wearing T-shirts and caps and sweaters with 2003 national championship logos on them, vowing not to carry the practice over into the 2005 season. Some, no doubt, will be talking about Justin Vincent's off-tackle run on the first play of the 2004 Sugar Bowl for years.

Many firmly believe LSU is four or five months, not 45 years, away from another legitimate run at a national championship.

When Miles replaced Saban at LSU on Jan. 3, the over-under for Miles' first season seemed to be 8-3, at least in my circles. After spring practice, that changed to 9-2. Long before the Sept. 3 season opener, I'm telling you, that will change to 10-1.

Because, as everyone is saying, LSU is loaded. Because, as handicapper extraordinaire Phil Steele predicts, LSU will play Southern California in the 2006 Rose Bowl, the title game for 2005.

The Saban-Miles transition has interesting parallels to the Bertman-Laval handoff. Bertman won a national championship in his next-to-last season coaching LSU, one year before and one year after losing super regionals.

Saban won a national title in his next-to-last season coaching LSU, one year before and one year after losing Jan. 1 bowls.

Saban left Miles far more talent for the 2005 football season than Bertman left Laval for the 2002 baseball season. There are precious few personnel questions for which most LSU fans don't have all the answers.

The biggest question mark is essentially the same one Saban warned about during the 2004 preseason. Every team ranked ahead of LSU last August had what the Tigers didn't have: a proven quarterback.

That affects everything: how you play defense, how you view special teams, how you script each game plan.

And how high you aim.

The bar is set high for Les Miles. I don't think he has any idea what he's about to experience. Two months, coach.