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NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP NOTES
LSU's Dorsey, Miles respect Laurinaitis
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
BATON ROUGE, La. — — In the past two weeks, LSU defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey has traveled to Charlotte, Houston, Orlando and Los Angeles. There was more discomfort than simply jet lag.
"See, I'm not a big-time flier," said Dorsey, the 6-foot-2, 303-pounder. "I don't like flying too much, so that was the biggest thing for me."
Extras
Along the way, Dorsey picked up several national awards, many of them in direct competition with Ohio State linebacker James Laurinaitis. While weathering his fear of the skies, Dorsey took home the Outland Trophy (best interior lineman), Bronko Nagurski Award (defensive player of the year), Lombardi Award (outstanding lineman) and Lott Trophy (defensive I.M.P.A.C.T. player of year).
Dorsey, who has six sacks and 11.5 tackles for loss despite fighting injuries this season, also buddied up to Laurinaitis, who will be his opponent when Ohio State and LSU meet on Jan. 7 in the BCS championship game in New Orleans.
"He's a great guy, real humble," Dorsey said. "He's an awesome player, and I admire his game. We had a lot of time to talk. Everything but football. Everybody wanted to talk about football, so we tried to talk about anything but football, just clowning around and things like that."
LSU coach Les Miles also saw plenty of Laurinaitis as he accompanied Dorsey on the various trips.
"No guy's allowed to have that many highlights," Miles said of Laurinaitis. "He's one of the very fine players in college football and very representative of a well-coached team in philosophy and very aggressive style of play and very talented defense."
Pelini coaching
LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini, an Ohio State safety from 1987-90, has accepted the head coaching job at Nebraska but will continue to coach the LSU defense in the championship game. Miles was asked what his terms were for Pelini to return for this game.
"I agreed that he could call the entire defense, call the plays, and I also agreed that we would be ahead at the end of the game," Miles joked. "If he called the defense that didn't allow that then he would be relieved of duty immediately."
