LSU Football: Why Tigers fans should be big Hawaii fans this week

LSU football will kick off the 2021 season on the road on September 4 against UCLA.

While this will be the first game of the year for the Tigers, it will actually be the Bruins’ second game of the season.

UCLA plays its first game of the season on Saturday against Hawaii.

This is a game LSU will obviously be watching closely. And Tigers fans should be cheering for Hawaii.

Why LSU football fans should be cheering for Hawaii

It doesn’t necessarily matter whether or not Hawaii beats UCLA — LSU fans shouldn’t really care about the outcome of the game.

What really matters is the competitiveness of the game.

LSU just needs Hawaii to give the Bruins a tough game — or at least a game that makes UCLA sweat a bit.

The Tigers coaching staff will be watching film of this game closely. It’ll be the only 2021 UCLA game action that Ed Orgeron and his staff will have available to study while preparing for the Bruins next week.

UCLA will likely try to keep things vanilla on offense. They won’t want to give too much away to LSU.

The hope for the Tigers is that Hawaii makes the game competitive enough that UCLA is forced to stray from their vanilla approach and reveal more of their offense in this matchup. That would be an obvious advantage for LSU.

Now, how likely is it that this will happen?

I think it’s very possible. Hawaii was a solid team last season, going 5-4 in Todd Graham’s first season as the program’s head coach. Hawaii beat Nevada and Houston last season, while also playing Boise State close (Hawaii lost that matchup 40-32).

If nothing else, this matchup will at least give LSU a good idea of the personnel that UCLA plans to use on September 4.