In Major League Baseball there is the New York Yankees vs. the Boston Red Sox.
College basketball has Duke vs. North Carolina.
And college football has Michigan vs. Ohio State, Auburn vs. Alabama and LSU vs. Arkansas … or Ole Miss … or Florida … or, Alabama.
The list goes on.
While LSU provides one of the most unique and exciting atmospheres in college sports, one thing the football program has lacked in recent years is the presence of a big-time rivalry – the single game fans and players alike look forward to every season.
Some players mark the day of the Florida game on their calendars, others the Auburn game, and others circle the day after Thanksgiving when the Tigers traditionally battle Arkansas for the Golden Boot.
“When you’re playing at a high level, you’re going to get everybody’s best shot,” said senior running back Jacob Hester. “To us, Florida’s a rivalry, Auburn’s a rivalry, Arkansas is a rivalry. It seems like we have five rivals. Instead of one big one, we have five little ones.”
One of the most unpopular teams in college football, at least for Tiger fans, has been a squad No. 2 LSU has not faced on the field since 1984 – the preseason No. 1 USC Trojans.
Ever since LSU and USC split the national championship in 2003, Tiger fans have developed hatred for the Trojans, developing a “rivalry” based not on head-to-head wins and losses but on polling decisions by media members and coaches.
Few people on the LSU staff can attest to what a true rivalry with USC is like.
But one person who can is first-year wide receivers coach D.J. McCarthy, who held the same position at UCLA this past season and helped lead the Bruins to a 13-9 victory against the Trojans in the 2006 regular season finale.
“It’s the only national college nation where the two teams are in the same city,” McCarthy said. “You got Florida and Florida State, Michigan and Ohio State, Georgia and Georgia Tech. None of those schools are in the same city. [With UCLA and USC], you’re talking about two schools separated by 12 miles.”
The Bruins and Trojans have squared off every season since 1936, with USC leading the overall series 41-28. The Bruins have the longest winning streak in the rivalry, winning eight straight games from 1991 to 1998.
“My wife, being from California, her whole family is split in half,” McCarthy said. “Really the whole Southern California [area] is split up that way, four million people split down the middle.”
The constant debate about who the sole national champion was in the 2003 season has also become somewhat of a talking point for best friends Hester and USC senior quarterback John David Booty, former teammates at Evangel High School in Shreveport.
Hester said he and Booty talk all the time about what could happen between the two teams come January if the preseason polls hold true to form.
“It’s fun to talk about,” Hester said. “When we talk on the phone we say ‘Man it’d be great to play for a national championship.’ If we’re fortunate to get in the national championship with them, it’ll be a good thing. But that’s so far away it’s hard to think about.”
This is not the first time McCarthy has been in a situation like LSU and USC find themselves in now. He played on Washington’s 1991 national championship team, a squad that split the title that season with the more-recognized Miami Hurricanes.
While the Hurricanes were more commonly recognized in the following years as “national champions,” McCarthy and the Huskies got revenge in 1994 by defeating Miami on the road 38-20.
McCarthy said the so-called “West Coast bias” that existed for many years against football teams has shifted because of the recent success of the Trojans.
“Now it’s kind of opposite because USC’s getting all the [publicity] and LSU’s kind of being overlooked,” he said.
McCarthy said the lack of a premier rivalry game does not bother him because playing in the Southeastern Conference provides for rivalry-type contests on a weekly basis.
“They don’t have the type of atmosphere, day in and day out like you do in the SEC in a stadium like ours or Tennessee’s or Georgia’s,” he said. “There are games at UCLA, if [they] are not playing a Pac-10 opponent, they’re getting 35 to 40,000 people. Here, we’re always going to get 80 to 90,000 people. [The USC/UCLA] rivalry brings them all out.”
McCarthy said trends in recruiting have balanced out the level of competition in the SEC region, making most conference contests seem somewhat like a rivalry.
“Everyone in the Pac-10 gets their talent from Southern California, and being UCLA or USC, you get first pick of the talent,” he said. “You come down to the South, you have all these states that have quality players that if you can take care of your state, you have a chance to be successful. If Oregon just recruited the state of Oregon, they wouldn’t have a chance.”
Although McCarthy has only been at LSU a few months, he is quickly learning the unique passion of its fans.
“They hate everything that’s not purple and gold, so every week is a rivalry,” he said. “I like that.”
—-Contact Tyler Batiste at [email protected]