Don't Call them Battles unless They Are Regular
This week, LSU announced it will be playing Tulane in football again in the year 2030. Well, it wasn't exactly announced that way. Here is the headline from the LSU Sports.net website.
The Tulane part was buried in the second paragraph with a one-sentence paragraph later in the story.
BATON ROUGE – LSU has added four Louisiana teams to its future non-conference football schedule beginning with a game against Northwestern State on Aug. 28, 2027, the school announced on Friday.
- Other additions to future LSU football schedules include the Tigers hosting Louisiana-Monroe and Southern in 2028 followed by Tulane in 2030. In 2028, LSU will open the season against ULM on August 26 followed by hosting Southern in week 3 on September 9.
- The game against Southern will mark only the second meeting between the teams and the first since 2022 when the Tigers beat the Jaguars, 65-17, in the home opener that year.
- In 2030, Tulane will make its first trip to Tiger Stadium since 2009 when LSU hosts the Green Wave in the season-opener on August. 31.
(Underline added by On SI Tulane for emphasis)
Tulane fans would argue the two should meet every year. LSU fans ask why, since the series is so lopsided (in favor of the Tigers, 69-wins in the 98-games played).
Battle for the Rag
Don't expect any LSU team to play a Tulane team on a yearly basis. Football, basketball, baseball, underwater basket weaving, you name it, LSU considers Tulane and other state schools as their little brothers and sisters. That's not meant as a knock. It is meant as an actual thought process that has been around since the late 1900s and has grown into that mentality in Baton Rouge.
All you have to do is listen to LSU women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey after the Tigers' 30-point win in Fogelman against Tulane. Wave coach Ashley Langford had said right before Mulkey spoke that she would love to play LSU every year. We asked the Tigers' coach what she thought about that. Skip to the 9:15 mark of the video to hear her response.
Mulkey is not the exception. She is the rule. Tulane fans can wish all they want. LSU will not play a Green Wave team on a regular basis, unless every 10-years is considered "regular."
The Battle for the Bell
Meanwhile, Southern Miss and Tulane used to play every year. Heck, the two schools even created a trophy to be held by the school that wins the game. The two started playing against each other in 1979 and continued playing every year through 2006. Then scheduling conflicts cropped up as the two went different ways in different conferences.
Sound familiar?
USM and TU played each other twice more after 2006 until taking a break from 2011-2020. The two have played sporadically since then, the last one in 2023 in Hattiesburg.
And before any Tulane fans start thinking the "big brother" thing with Southern Miss, the Golden Eagles hold the series advantage, winning 24-of-the-34 games played between them.
The Rolling Stones: You Can't Always Get What You Want
Tulane fans want to play LSU. LSU does not. Southern Miss fans want to play Tulane every year. Tulane does not.
So, if teams don't play every year, can it be considered a rivalry? And if conferences determine who you play for the most part, then that "every year" thing is no longer a thing. What about every two, or three, or four (or ten) years? Is it still a rivalry?
Now that Tulane and LSU will be playing again in 2030 (no follow-up date has been determined as of yet). the call for the Battle for the Rag has been revived, especially by Tulane fans. The Rag was started in 1940 with a ground swell of support, mostly from the students of each school, after some growing tensions between the two teams, hoping to usher in a time of good sportsmanship.
The same cannot be said for the Battle for the Bell, which began in 1979 but didn't produce a bell to be won until twenty years later. The Southern Miss Alumni Association provided the bell that was approved by both schools. Not students. Schools. So, the Battle for the Bell was more school-motivated rather than a student body push.
Let's say the obvious: neither the Rag nor the Bell mean the same thing they used to. The conflict between the above-mentioned schools doesn't mean the same as it used to.
The solution? Either renew those rivalries on a regular basis or give up the ghost on the Rag and Bell, because neither of them hold their sacrosanct position they once did.
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Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.