A coin flip has the final say, but there is a 50-50 chance junior kicker James Hairston will kickoff LSU’s football season in his hometown stadium — the modern marvel of American architecture occupied by his favorite boyhood team.
Hairston has stepped on the AT&T Stadium field before in 2011, where the resident Dallas Cowboys were holding their annual Cowboys Classic, pitting LSU against Oregon. Though he wouldn’t clock game time as a redshirt freshman kicker, he looked on gleefully as his team whipped No. 3 Oregon in front of the millions of eyes glued to ESPN — a beatdown that was eerily similar to the one LSU perpetrated on Texas A&M months earlier in the same building.
LSU will play in the Cowboys Classic for the second time Saturday. The game will mark the third time in as many years the Tigers will play in one of Cowboys Stadium’s marquee college matchups, the most of any non-Texas team.
It’s the first time Hairston’s getting involved, but he knows what games like these mean for the team.
“It was an amazing experience to play in that beautiful stadium and to represent LSU on the highest stage,” Hairston said. “… People don’t understand. There’s a huge alumni base in Dallas. That’s what also makes [the Cowboys Classic] appropriate, because those Tiger fans are being handed a great deal of awesome LSU football, and college football for that matter.”
LSU and its opponent TCU aren’t the only ones with a stake, of course. If he’s lucky, Hairston will also kickoff ESPN’s slate of primetime mega-matchups. The LSU Athletic Department worked diligently with ESPN and the Cowboys to strike a deal mutually beneficial for all parties in the mad scramble for TV money and expose their brand on the cheap.
And with its third trip to Dallas, LSU further makes its case to nickname the city “Baton Rouge West.”
THE PROCESS
For Senior Associate Athletic Director Verge Ausberry, who schedules the Tigers’ games, the Cowboys Classic was a no-brainer.
When a predecessor signed a contract for a future home-and-home series with TCU in 2005, the Horned Frogs played in the unheralded Mountain West Conference.
Now, they’re a household name in the Big 12, so Ausberry pushed for a new arrangement at a neutral site that would minimize the chances of a loss. The team received — and has since sold out — an allotted 25,000 tickets, compared to the 7,000 TCU would have given them if the game were held at TCU’s stadium, which is 18 miles away from the ultimate site.
“We get LSU in there whenever we can,” said Dave Brown, an ESPN executive partly responsible for scheduling primetime games.
ESPN and the Cowboys approached LSU for the Oregon game. But this time around, Brown said it was LSU and TCU who were the enterprising ones.
THE SPOILS
During hotly anticipated nonconference broadcasts like the Classic, Tiger players are expert salesmen as much as they are prodigious athletes.
“We couldn’t pay the amount of money [needed] for the publicity we get out of events like this,” Ausberry said.
Not only does LSU save money on ad space, but also on the fact that it has to host one less costly game. Ausberry said the team is committed to Saturday nights in Tiger Stadium, but that the occasional boost is invaluable.
In a July story, TCU 360, the school’s student newspaper, reported a $3 million take away for the university provided by Jack Hesselbrock, TCU’s associate athletic director for internal relations, and cited the same for LSU per a contract received through a public records request.
All sources interviewed by The Daily Reveille with knowledge of the contract declined to confirm the report, but Ausberry said LSU was set to make “at least $3 million,” with a bonus structure finalizing the figure. According to Ausberry, LSU made “close to $4 million” in the Oregon game after signing on for what SportsBusiness Journal reported as $3.5 million guaranteed.
The televised event also provides opportunities to reach potential players who would otherwise not consider LSU as a go-to school. Far away recruits with dreams of making millions themselves in the NFL watch LSU play on the Cowboys’ home field and start to get ideas.
Locally, it continues to expand LSU’s visibility which, according to 247Sports recruiting expert Shea Dixon, has increased with the decline of Texas and Oklahoma. Daylon Mack, a five-star defensive end prospect from the area who was offered a scholarship by LSU earlier this month, has talked about making an appearance Saturday, Dixon said.
Monday, Mack tweeted, “[The Tigers] are in my top 1.”
BATON ROUGE WEST
When asked about LSU’s Dallas contingent, Michael Konradi interrupted: “Ah, Baton Rouge West.”
As an executive for the Cotton Bowl Classic, an organization that handles all of the coordination of teams for the stadium’s college games, Konradi worked with the Tigers in Dallas all three times. In every instance, the LSU alumni hotbed has boiled over.
“The LSU contingent is always one of the best traveling contingents in college football, so you expect LSU fans to arrive early and stay late,” Konradi said. “The fact that it’s an 8 o’clock game plays right into the LSU fanbase.”
Bob Brown, president of the LSU Alumni Association Dallas chapter, hopes he can make those incoming fans feel a little more at home than they already do. Members compiled a list of Tiger-friendly events taking place in the run up to the game.
And aside from the watch parties it puts on every gameday, the chapter, which sports a mailing list of 4,500 names, will host a tailgate it expects to draw 1,200 people.
“We had a lot of people migrate here from Katrina and just transfer for jobs and stuff,” Brown said.
He wasn’t one of those, but if there’s anyone personifying the Tiger craze in Dallas, it’s Brown.
He didn’t even go to LSU.