Louisiana State University

NEW ORLEANS -- Meet Jacob O'Hair, the Californian in Monday night's Bowl Championship Series title game. If you are into tracking the progress of home-state players, better memorize that name now. You won't hear it a lot Monday night, if at all, when O'Hair and Louisiana State play Ohio State in college football's national championship game. "A reporter asked me the other day what I hoped for in publicity," O'Hair said here Friday. "I told him I hoped for nothing." And he meant it.

NEW ORLEANS -- After months of twists, turns, detours, U-turns and upsets, tonight's Bowl Championship Series title game has arrived. Ohio State (11-1) versus Louisiana State (11-2) in the Superdome is not necessarily the game everyone pined for or expected. USC versus Georgia might have done more to move the applause needle. Ohio State versus LSU is just the game that happened. Tonight is the relief you get when the fishing line gets untangled. Tonight is the BCS at its best and worst.

NEW ORLEANS -- Ohio State getting thumped by a Southeastern Conference school in the Bowl Championship Series title game is no longer a sentence, it's a ritual. Last year it was Florida doing the dishonor, Monday night it was Louisiana State, which spotted Ohio State a 10-0 lead and then switched the stop light to "geaux" en route to a 38-24 win in front of 79,651 at the Superdome.

NEW ORLEANS -- It wasn't a national championship football game, it was a Bourbon Street karaoke bar. It wasn't prime-time Monday, it was 3 a.m. on a Thursday. It wasn't a football team, it was wobbly warblers decked in flowery shirts, tight shorts and bad manners. And, once again, in the painful light of this morning, the college football world stands amid the sour and stained remains of its annual party while asking itself the annual question. Who let Ohio State in?

TAMPA, Fla. -- Alexis Hornbuckle didn't let her second chance go to waste. Hornbuckle, a senior guard for the Tennessee women's basketball team, made up for her mental error in the closing seconds Sunday night against Louisiana State and scored her only field goal of the game off an offensive rebound with under a second remaining, lifting the top-seeded Lady Vols to a 47-46 victory at St. Pete Times Forum.

Late-morning sunlight slips through the giant oaks on the quad of Louisiana State University. A woman is poring over the pages of a book, undisturbed by the babbling fountain nearby. A handful of students on bicycles lazily crisscross the area, maneuvering through a series of pebble-covered benches as they head toward class. It is the veritable picture of calm. Across campus at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, home of the Lady Tigers, it is a far different story.

A Louisiana State University student has been jailed on charges that he threatened to blow up Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during a campaign stop in Baton Rouge, police said Saturday. Freshman Richard Ryan Wargo, 19, was arrested Thursday after a fellow student told police that Wargo had said he wanted to kill Clinton. Clinton of New York is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. She spoke Saturday to the National Conference of Black Mayors in the Louisiana capital.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- It was midway through the third quarter when the crowd at Tiger Stadium heard news of USC's upset loss over the public address system and filled the muggy night with a shuddering roar. Louisiana State's fans continued chanting and celebrating for a solid five minutes. But there was still some vital business remaining on the field.

Glen Davis is called "Baby Shaq" and sometimes "Baby Barkley" and the reasons are obvious. Louisiana State's center is 6 feet 9, 310 pounds. And that's a slimmed-down 310 pounds, Davis wants you to know. He has been on practically a starvation diet for a year, Davis said sadly. His world is lessened because he can't eat entire bags of cookies or KFC family buckets -- he used to be a family of one when it came to the bucket -- or three quarts of ice cream one after the other after the other.

Tyrus Thomas did a boogie, a two-step and a little polka all at once. Glen Davis shook and shimmied and draped himself in a yellow feather boa because, after all, this was as good as Mardi Gras here at the Georgia Dome. His Louisiana State Tigers are going to the Final Four.