I don’t understand the logic in picking Louisiana-Monroe as the Homecoming game.
Why choose what (looking at the schedule at the start of the season) should and likely will be the most boring and least hyped game of the season as the Homecoming game? It doesn’t make any sense.
This game has so little build up around it, especially after the win against Alabama, that the only way to watch it is to pay for it.
It was a lose-lose situation all along.
Had LSU lost to Alabama, the hangover from the loss would have been so great that LSU fans likely would have felt the season was lost (remember, LSU fans are stubborn like that). The Homecoming game would have done little, if anything at all, to assuage the pain.
The Tigers won the game, and still few people care about this game. Tiger faithful are looking forward to the upcoming games against Ole Miss and Arkansas, not ULM.
In fact, I’m willing to bet Tiger fans are more interested in the outcome of the Georgia versus Auburn game than this game.
Then, on top of it all, should LSU lose to ULM, the Homecoming game will be remembered as a loss. If LSU beats ULM, then it did what it should have done.
It’s not exciting.
Obviously, I’m not trying to disrespect ULM. LSU just needs to pick a better Homecoming opponent.
Let’s just take a hypothetical situation and say the Homecoming game was actually last week against Alabama instead of this week.
Now obviously this is hindsight, but hang with me.
There would already be an enormous amount of hype surrounding the game because Alabama has been one of LSU’s most fierce rivals in the past few years. The game is always bound to be close.
On top of that, the campus would be inundated with 150,000 plus fans for the spectacle.
The whole point of Homecoming is to welcome back alumni from the past. There’s no better way to do that than to pick the biggest home game of the year as the Homecoming game.
Just look back at LSU’s past with Homecoming games.
In 1958, it was LSU’s Homecoming victory against Florida that helped push the Tigers toward an undefeated regular season.
On a Homecoming Halloween night in 1959, it was Billy Cannon’s punt return against Ole Miss that gave LSU a big victory.
Those are the ghosts of Homecoming past.
Now all we have is Louisiana Tech and Troy from the past two seasons, both of which were made far more exciting than they needed to be.
Simply put, LSU needs to go back to the past on this one and start playing a worthwhile team on Homecoming. It has become a nation wide epidemic of big schools playing smaller opponents that they are virtually guaranteed a win against for their Homecoming games.
It kind of makes me wonder who the smaller schools play for their Homecoming games (for ULM, it’s rival Troy).
Back in high school, I remember my school’s Homecoming games being against big rivals. It built up anticipation for the games.
Maybe it’s time to go back to our roots and start to pick a Homecoming game that matters.
Andy Schwehm is a 21-year-old English and psychology senior from New Orleans. Follow him on
Twitter @TDR_Aschwehm.
—-
Contact Andy Schwehm at [email protected]