McNeese Week 2016

[cajunhawk]

A few recent examples:

Army is playing at Yale this year.

Ball State is playing at Illinois State this year.

Idaho played at Montana in 2003.

In 1984, the No. 8 Eagles traveled to in-state rival Holy Cross (the only time a ranked school has that I could find)

Boston College? 1984 was before football started to grow the divide between the have and have nots. BYU winning a national title in the same year confirms that. Might have been the beginning of the end for us have nots.

[CajunJack55]

Boston College? 1984 was before football started to grow the divide between the have and have nots. BYU winning a national title in the same year confirms that. Might have been the beginning of the end for us have nots.

Yes sorry Boston College. Not to mention SMU. They won the SWC that year.

Not sure if it correlates, but this is the list of I-A teams who did not have a conference in 1984:

#5 Boston College
#11 South Carolina
Army Rutgers
#17 Florida State
Virginia Tech
West Virginia
#18 Miami (FL)
Notre Dame
Southwestern Louisiana
Penn State
Syracuse Temple
Memphis
Navy
Southern Miss
Pittsburgh
Tulane
Cincinnati
East Carolina
Louisville

[BirdofParadise]

A few recent examples:

Army is playing at Yale this year.

Ball State is playing at Illinois State this year.

Idaho played at Montana in 2003.

In 1984, the No. 8 Boston College Eagles traveled to in-state rival Holy Cross (the only time a ranked school has that I could find)

You are correct about Army. Ball State is not playing Illinois State. They are playing Indiana St, but that game is in Muncie.

[zephyr]

I would For a million dollars

So would I but we all know their athletic budgets will not pay us that type of money. What is the average FCS athletic budget anyhow? I bet its not that much more than that total anyhow.

[zephyr]

A few recent examples:

Army is playing at Yale this year.

Ball State is playing at Indiana State this year.

Idaho played at Montana in 2003.

In 1984, the No. 8 Boston College Eagles traveled to in-state rival Holy Cross (the only time a ranked school has that I could find)

I don't know how Army playing Yale fits into this equation but the examples are extremely limited. Either way, the economics of the situation don't lend themselves to supporting this as a recurring issue. It just doesn't make sense

[CajunJack55]

So would I but we all know their athletic budgets will not pay us that type of money. What is the average FCS athletic budget anyhow? I bet its not that much more than that total anyhow.

Doubt they could afford it. Especially Southland.

Big Sky
Montana $5,896,289
Montana State $5,044,725
Portland State $3,832,289
UC Davis $3,566,555
Eastern Washington $3,444,305
Sacramento State $3,299,190
Northern Arizona $3,267,428
Idaho State $3,261,187
North Dakota $3,181,952
Cal Poly $3,066,342
Northern Colorado $2,965,650
Weber State $2,675,532
Southern Utah $2,333,902


Colonial
James Madison $6,986,160
Delaware $6,265,337
Richmond $6,068,055
Villanova $5,921,525
William & Mary $4,971,542
Stony Brook $4,399,966
New Hampshire $4,142,300
Maine $3,756,246
Towson $3,563,136
Rhode Island $3,559,524
Albany $2,191,690


MVFC
North Dakota State $4,044,796
Youngstown State $3,725,254
Southern Illinois $3,641,600
Northern Iowa $3,154,067
Illinois State $3,166,946
Western Illinois $3,007,439
Indiana State $2,859,361
South Dakota State $2,723,760
South Dakota $2,687,268
Missouri State $2,534,968


Southern
Furman $6,150,270
Samford $5,157,707
Appalachian State $4,214,171
Elon $4,201,027
Citadel $3,885,465
Wofford $3,879,148
Georgia Southern $3,521,604
Chattanooga $3,245,523
Western Carolina $2,792,939


Southland
Lamar $3,582,771
Stephen F. Austin $3,410,990
Sam Houston State $3,053,896
Northwestern State $2,946,079
SE Louisiana $2,842,750
Central Arkansas $2,602,141
McNeese State $2,488,286
Nicholls State $1,997,768
Houston Baptist NA

[zephyr]

There you go. You also have to figure in their return from other sources such as vending for the game. If they paid you that type of money to go, they would have to have a lot more people attend the game than their stadium could hold just to make a dent in that appearance fee. LSU can pay us $1million to go play because they will have 105,000 in the stands to buy food and drink.

[CrazyCajun]

My point was, if they wanted to pay 10 million we can't, it's against the rules. It doesn't matter if we would have a benefit or not.

[Hammer58]

Good to know I can still get under the skin of those Brokeback Cowboys.

[California Cajun]

I'm from a generation who got beat by them on a regular basis, including all four years I was in college (0-37, 0-38, 21-33, 19-20). Objectively speaking I'd respond the same way if I was one of them.

I'm also someone who doesn't believe in avoiding an opponent because "we have nothing to gain and something to lose" by playing them.

I am always in favor of playing them because I remember all of those defeats and want to avenge every single one of them. If we lose, shame on us. I also believe in no excuses.

I also remember 1984.

[Hammer58]

I'm from a generation who got beat by them on a regular basis, including all four years I was in college (0-37, 0-38, 21-33, 19-20). Objectively speaking I'd respond the same way if I was one of them.

I'm also someone who doesn't believe in avoiding an opponent because "we have nothing to gain and something to lose" by playing them.

I am always in favor of playing them because I remember all of those defeats and want to avenge every single one of them. If we lose, shame on us. I also believe in no excuses.

I also remember 1984.

1984 is exactly why I never want to play them in any sport and in turn help their finances in any way shape of form. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what happened on the fields, diamonds or courts. It's all about the things that took place off the athletic fields. ____'em.

[JohnStOnge]

Guys, it's not that McNeese fans think McNeese is superior to ULL per se. I think it's more a matter of us tending to think the ULL community tends to think the school is something it's not. Kind of a "megalomania" thing. But I also think the McNeese community isn't the only community that things that.

I think we all would say that ULL has done better in its overall athletic programs. Football? That's different. I'd say that most would say that since USL (back then) made the decision to stay I-A back in the early 80s and McNeese made the decision to move to I-AA at the time McNeese has had the better football team during most of the years. Also, though we recognize that ULL has had some good records in recent years, we also recognize that their wins have come against weak FBS teams. Last year, for instance, the teams ULL beat finished rated 95th, 103rd, 71st, 74th, 116th, 90th, 122nd, and 80th among 125 FCS teams according to the "average" of ratings at http://www.masseyratings.com/cf/arch/compare2013-16.htm. I can't get to the final FCS ratings for last year at that site but the other win was against the team that finished 72nd in the FCS Sagarin ratings. In other words: ULL fashioned a nice record by beating weak FBS teams that were not outside of the range of what one might expect to encounter in FCS. I think most recognize that ULL has been a lot better the past three years than it was when McNeese played them in 2007. Also that was a very good McNeese team. It was devastated by injury by the end of the season but when ULL played them they were loaded. They'll have to be lucky to have that good a team in 2016. But it's not like playing Nebraska this year or LSU next year. It's just not and I think you guys know that. ULL, from our standpoint, has over the past three years basically been equivalent in caliber to a top 25 FCS team. A tough opponent from McNeese's standpoint. But not "out of their league" in terms of caliber.

Academics? I don't know. I've never seen what I think is a valid ranking of the academic value of universities. What you'd need is some measure of actual output; some measure of how well prepared students of given incoming ability are upon graduation. And so far I haven't seen that. All I know is that I have worked with people from all sorts of places from the Ivy league to small State schools (like McNeese) including a pretty good number of USL/ULL graduates and have not personally seen any indication that I've been at a disadvantage in terms of preparation by virtue of having gone to McNeese EXCEPT that certain universities are such that the name itself gives the person an advantage. It's kind of a "self fulfilling prophecy" thing. Like I have a colleague that has Bachelors and Masters Engineering Degrees from Cornell. But, frankly, if I compare her to a guy I worked with who had a Bachelors from Louisiana Tech there is no question in my mind as to who I came off as thinking was better prepared. And it wasn't the lady from Cornell.

It pains me to say that but it's the truth. Yet I guarantee you when people see "Cornell" next to that lady's name she's going to have an advantage over someone with "Louisiana Tech" next to their name.

The way I look at it is this: The Ivy League gets a fraction of the top 1% in terms of ability to begin with. Then when they get out they have an advantage because they've got an Ivy League degree. The name matters. So you can't really say the Ivy League actually provides the best education just because its graduates are very successful. Most of them were probably genius level IQ to begin with and they also have the "name" on the degree. but you don't really know that someone who's in that top fraction of 1% in terms of ability gets a better education at Harvard than they would at Southeastern Louisiana. It's kind of like giving credit to Hussein Bolt's high school track coach (if there are high school track coaches where he came from) for his 100 meter time. The reality is who coached him has very little to do with it. He's just very talented innately.