USL: A Retrospective

Saturday nights in Lake Charles weren't nearly as magical as in Baton Rouge, but every so often a Lake Charles Saturday night would prove to be a pretty wild scene. When I was a kid, the McNeese St. Cowboys struck up rivalries with the likes of the Northwestern St. Demons, the Lamar Cardinals (when they actually had a football team), and the NLU (aka UL-M) Indians. The greatest of rivalries, however, occurred when the boys from Lafayette drove west down I-10 for the annual McNeese/USL matchup.

The excitement of live college football was awesome enough for a boy my age, but it became even more thrilling when USL came to town. Maybe it was the chorus of fans chanting "Go to Hell, USL... Go to Hell!", or perhaps it was the fact that Cowboy Stadium (the glorified high school stadium in Lake Charles, LA, not Jerry Jones' massive UFO look alike in Arlington, TX) was extra crowded when the Cajuns came to town, but there was just something about those McNeese/USL games that ignited our community. Those were good times.

Now that I'm some 25 years removed from that wonderful rivalry, USL just doesn't ignite the same sense of excitement as before. McNeese St. has enjoyed quite a bit of football success since those days, and is one of the more highly respected 1-AA (or whatever they call it these days) programs around, while the artist formerly known as USL has done little more than fill the role of non-conference cupcake for the big boys of college football. Instead of gearing up for an exciting battle between two in-state teams that belong in the same division, I'm simply hoping that LSU will, once again, demonstrate its dominance in a matchup against an opponent that should probably still be playing under the lights in Lake Charles instead of Baton Rouge.

Still, if Appalachian St. (who, by the way, McNeese St. beat last weekend) taught us anything, it was that every so often David beats Goliath. But even if, by some voodoo curse, UL-L beats LSU on Saturday night, it won't prove what the folks in Lafayette have been unsuccessfully striving after for years. You see, whether it's USL or UL-L, the proper response to this overinflated underling must always be as it was on those Fall Lake Charles nights many years ago: "Go to Hell, UL-L... Go to Hell!"

LSU will always be the big dog in this hunt, and that is exactly as it should be.