Bob is not civil service.
I did not listen to the interview, but man there is an easy way to answer this question and it would be a multiple part answer.
#1--Dave, we want to every year in, and year out be the best athletic team we can be and we choose to strive to not only be the best in the state, but the best in the country in every sport. Not saying we will be, but that is our goal. We want our competition to be those universities that have had successes in athletics at the highest level.
#2. We do feel we compete already in multiple sports with LSU, take for example softball for one. We beat LSU to make it to a Super Regional and felt really close to having a chance to winning that Super Regional. Not only that but, I would compare our overall success in recent years to LSU in basketball, we were a tournament team last year that should and could have beat Tennessee who ended up as a Sweet 16 team, LSU did not make the tournament at all. And add to that baseball, granted they won a national championship this year, but we were a very good regional team that competed for a Super Regional spot. We don't know if we are at their level at every sport right now, but that is our goal, to be better than them in everything we do, hell our goal is to be better than everyone in the country year in and year out.
#3, Finally, so if you think our rival is not LSU, who should it be, ULM, Tulane, La Tech, SLU, etc. Well let's look at overall athletic success in the last 10 years, using your logic, none of those teams should feel as if they are our rivals, so that being the case, then we need to challenge the team that people feel are not our rivals because of their success. That being said, then LSU is our rival.
I am not saying that La Tech, ULM, Tulane or any of the Southland conference teams can't be our rivals in sports, they should and can be or at least they should feel as they want to be, because of our success. That is the same reason that we feel that we are rivals with LSU. I know on an overall sport by sport, year by year basis we are not there yet, but I was brought here to be the guy that got us to that level and that is what I am here to do. Everyone is our rival, specifically those teams that we aspire to be like. I think our athletic program is light years ahead of where it was 10 years ago, hell 5 years ago. And we want each and every year for it to improve to the point where people are saying the same thing you said to me about other teams in the state.
We aspire to compete for national championships every time we take the field or court in every sport, otherwise why would we compete at all and that is what we will continue to do.
. . . Shultz is neither a master of information or genius of analysis . . . I’m not sure what he really is . . .
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