Jim Gazzolo column: It's time to revive backyard rivalries

American Press

2 days ago

Last week, McNeese State's men's basketball team finally finished its schedule for the upcoming season.
In what is becoming a yearly tradition, the Cowboys are being forced to wait as college basketball teams throughout the country play hide and seek when it comes to scheduling.
Especially against good mid-major programs like McNeese.
The Cowboys finished with two good money games, at Michigan and Rhode Island, but it's not ideal. Both those games will come after they have started their 22-game Southland Conference schedule in December.
New McNeese head coach Bill Armstrong said he would prefer not to do that, but understands his team's dilemma of becoming too good to play and not high-profile enough to lose to.
Just three years ago, before Will Wade came to town, McNeese basketball was everybody's homecoming guest.
The sad part of this is, it would be so easy to change.
Roughly three hours from Lake Charles sits 11 Division I basketball teams that don't play in the SLC. Seven of those clubs are in Louisiana. All are crying poor when it comes to travel costs for games.
They include some power conference programs as well, led by LSU and Houston, just two hours in each direction on Interstate 10. Houston is a top-10 team in the country,
The three others in range from Texas are Sam Houston State, Rice, and Texas A&M.
The optics look even worse from Louisiana.
McNeese does play Louisiana-Lafayette each season, so give the Ragin' Cajuns credit for not backing out. But that leaves six more possible games. There is Tulane, those LSU Tigers, Grambling State, and Southern University from the SWAC, and Louisiana-Monroe and Louisiana Tech.
That should be more than enough to choose from, yet not a sound. McNeese used to have thrilling games against Tech and played the Bulldogs two years ago in a multi-team event in Ruston.
Tech even won that game, so there's no reason not to play again. That's a rivalry that would be good for both schools once again. Instead, McNeese will once again have to play a couple of non-Division I games at home, something that hardly thrills the fan base.
Last season the Cowboys got Santa Clara and Texas State to come to Lake Charles and have return games with both set for the next two years. It means McNeese will travel to both the East and West Coasts.
Yet they won't be getting on a bus to play LSU, which is a game that would have huge in-state interest, given the current status of both programs. The cost of travel for any of these games would be perfect.
And we know McNeese fans would follow their team if they could. Yet common sense has never been a big part of college athletics, and this is just another indication of that.
It does go against good business, which says you have to give the people what they want.
McNeese fans want to see their Cowboys play the best around the area as many times as they can. But college coaches have other ideas, and that means for now those teams will stay off the Cowboys' radar.
Oh well, maybe next season.
Then again, I put that on your schedule.
•
Jim Gazzolo is a freelance writer who covers McNeese State athletics for the American Press. Email him at [e-mail]