Watch all of the 34 other bowl games, all of them, and you won’t see one like Saturday night’s New Orleans Bowl. That’s because the UL-Tulane matchup was much more than two teams celebrating successful seasons. It was the renewal of a rivalry. The numerous personal fouls, several offsetting, indicated these teams might dislike each other.
Tulane Head Coach Curtis Johnson’s post game comment about last year’s 41-13 loss to the Cajuns and that “we are gaining on them” implies the Cajuns are a standard of achievement for Tulane. And with the overall series record at 21-6 in the Wave’s favor, UL has a lot of ground to make up. Cajun oral legend has Tulane refusing to play UL in the late 1990s even if every game was played in the Dome. Supposedly, the Cajun program was beneath Tulane’s. Whether the legend is true, both programs are now close to dead even and on their way up. The two schools have enough similarities and differences to make for an exciting, intense rivalry.
It’s time to make UL vs. Tulane happen every year.