re: LSU to play Rice in '20 & '24

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It is Matt Moscona, but it's an 11 minute conversation with Verge Ausberry concerning scheduling. Summary of the conversation.........

Rice plays in BR in 2018 and 2024. LSU pays Rice 1.4 and 1.8 Million for those years. The game at NRG Stadium in 2020 will be a home game for Rice, which will pay LSU 3.5 Million to travel. This game would be replacing a game against a small school, typically around a $40 ticket and low attendance. He said until everyone else starts playing 2 or 3 Power 5 schools out of conference, this is how it has to be. Stated there's no way to play the SEC schedule and play 3 top tier Power 5 schools out of conference without putting your team at a disadvantage. He said LSU is one of the few schools that will even play 2 Power 5 teams OOC in the same year. For the success of the program and the health of the team, it only makes sense to continue scheduling on an equal playing field to what other conferences are doing. If it changes in the future, they'll change with it. It only benefits the Tigers to schedule these type of games. Gives LSU the opportunity to make money in an area they always want to heavily recruit. They already had UT on the home schedule for 2020 and already had UCLA on the home schedule for 2024. It gives a selling point to recruits to be able to say that by coming here, you'll not only get to play in the best college stadium atmosphere, but you'll be able to play in Pro Football stadiums as well where they'll have a better chance to be scouted and seen personally by others they may not have had the chance to do otherwise. They're also looking at playing in the Superdome against a major power 5 fairly soon as well as looking to play a game under those same conditions somewhere in the Southeast. The Rice game is under contract and it will not be moved from Saturday Sept 19th at NRG Stadium. Working on some things to fill 2022 and 2023 as well. Moscona tried to get Verge to tip his hand on a potential scheduling of Michigan or USC. He didn't bite.

That about sums it up fellows. Regardless...... GEAUX TIGERS