The new green grass lying in Tiger Stadium foreshadows the upcoming contests of the fall semester. If the Tigers hold true to form, this should be a time for much celebration both on the field and off. Some, including us, believe that adding one team to the schedule would bring even more excitement to the field: Southern University. LSU and Southern have opposed one another on almost every field with the major exception of football. One would think that it would have occurred as a matter of course for the two cross-town schools to get together for a major game. After all, our students can attend classes at each other’s schools in specific programs, and many University students have friends who attend Southern. Some who have been critical of this proposed arrangement will assert that Southern’s football program is in no way comparable to LSU’s. This is true to an extent. LSU has been a consistent contender for the National Championship for the past four years, whereas Southern is a 1AA team which finished with a losing record last year. Poor performance in past years, however, has not kept LSU from playing such other teams as The Citadel and ULL in 2002, UL-Monroe and Western Illinois in 2003, Arkansas State in 2004, North Texas and Appalachian State in 2005 and ULL and Tulane this year. This is, of course, not to cast any aspersions on our opponents but merely to illustrate a point: there’s nothing which keeps us from playing Southern. In fact, let’s face it, it could do a bit of good. Instead of paying other schools to come to Baton Rouge, we could distribute part of the funds to our fellow city university. We do not advocate that this game be played every year, or even every few years. Instead, it could become something which occurred every four years. It could be something which draws the students at both schools together, as they join in tailgating and debating the respective merits of both teams. We are not so naive that there would be any type of real racial healing or any lasting change to come out of the proceedings. People at this University will still fly Confederate flags and mutual suspicion will exist between the two schools. However, we cannot allow this to stand in the face of the fact that it would be interesting to watch two universities in the same town face off for the first time. In all events, at least we could watch a very interesting half-time show from both sides.
—–Send letters to the editor to [email protected]