LSU-McNeese cancellation an admission of irrelevance

Photo by the wonderfully talented Chris Parent.

By RICHARD FISCHER
Go-4-2 exclusive

The first step to admitting you have a problem is acknowledging there is one.

And unwittingly, LSU admitted it (and every other college football program for that matter) has one Saturday night.

The problem stems from economics and manifests itself in the form of shams that disguise themselves as warm-up games for Power-5 conference teams.

LSU’s decision to cancel its season opener versus McNeese State unveils the farce for what these early-season and Homecoming-week games really are. The decision served as a loud and clear statement to anyone willing to listen that these games simply don’t matter as anything more than an economic driver.

Granted, they do indeed serve as warm-up games. There is value to that, and this column isn’t meant to diminish the importance getting reps in versus a live foe. Instead, LSU did it for me.

By simply cancelling the game despite ample opportunities to play it later in the three-day weekend or even later that night and into Sunday morning, LSU implicated that this game doesn’t matter.

But it sure mattered when Tiger Stadium security scanned tickets.

It sure mattered when LSU sold those tickets.

And don’t you dare make the mistake one of my Reveille coworkers did back in my college days, calling a win versus an overmatched foe “easy” in a question to Les Miles.

But if victories like these weren’t assumed to be easy, ask yourself, would the game have been cancelled rather than postponed?

Was the Arizona State game cancelled back in ‘05?

What about the Tennessee game two weeks later?

Give LSU credit where credit is due for re-scheduling North Texas during its bye week later that season, but I have to wonder if LSU looks back at that experience – literally playing a game 12 weeks in a row – and took that possibility off the table immediately to avoid the tired legs that caused LSU to get smashed by Georgia in Atlanta.

That thought process is very justifiable, and it would be a legitimate excuse if it were the only way to get the game in. Except that the weather had cleared up before the required re-start time of midnight and that there were two subsequent days where the vast majority of fans would have been able to enjoy a postponed contest.

(Side tangent: Does anyone else really buy the logistical excuse of playing the game later in the weekend? I’m sure TV had a lot to do with it, but they made a Monday night game versus Tennessee happen back in ’05 – on a Monday that wasn’t a holiday by the way. Athletic departments, just like all other rich and powerful entities, find ways to make things happen…….. except when they don’t want to. Anyway, moving on)

Player safety was given as a reason not to start the game back up again Saturday night. As legit and noble as that might be (because anyone who’s been up and down physically several times over the course of an evening knows the strain that puts on your muscles) I have to wonder if the same decision would have been made had an SEC opponent or a quality Power-5 foe been in the visiting locker room.

Ask yourself if you believe player safety will carry the same weight when the Tigers begin their SEC slate. When networks pressure athletics departments, I think you know who wins.

Fans and media have said for years, “Ahhhh, it’s fill in the blank directional state, it doesn’t matter.”

Well, for the first time LSU and its television partner SEC Network publicly agreed. They won’t say it, of course, but, as you know, actions speak louder than words.

So now that the bloom is off this rose, we’re left with the frustrating reality that either one-fourth or one-third of the games on almost all Power-5 college football schedules don’t matter. (And don’t give me Appalachian State-Michigan nonsense. I hate it when people use the exception to argue against the rule.)

These games are simply charades to line athletic departments’ pockets with cash, and when given the opportunity to not play the games (after receiving the money for said games, mind you), there is no remaining benefit to going through with the assured beatdowns. LSU AD Joe Alleva didn’t even have the decency to offer fans a refund or a voucher for a future ticket the same day the athletic department so gloriously announced a $1 million donation from Tiger great Patrick Peterson. THE SAME DAY!!!! What a kick in the gut that must feel like to fans walking to their cars in a downpour only to then sit in traffic!

So let’s break down the winners and losers here.

The big school’s athletic department wins because it keeps most of the gate.

The little school’s athletic department wins because it gets the money it so desperately needs to fund its yearly, multi-sport budget.

The coaches and players win and lose. They avoided taking injury risks by way of not getting reps. You be the judge.

But the overwhelming losers are the attending fans. (In a funny way, the fans who sold their tickets are winners here because they got some money back and may indeed get cash/tickets from LSU when the athletic department decides to make it right. Boy, that’s the message you want to send to your fans. You won by selling your tickets. Wooooooo for you!!!!)

And the deep, dirty secret is even if the game goes off without a hitch, the fans still lose for being subjected to “don’t-you-dare-call-them-easy-wins” for nearly half of their season-ticket package (3 of 7 games this year). It’s a bait and switch deception, one in which desperate-for-football fans are all too happy to be willingly complicit.

With the exception of Tim Brando making a fool of himself on Twitter Saturday night (thanks Cody), not one person thinks the College Football Playoff Committee will look back on LSU’s season and say, “Well, they only had to play 11 regular season games” as any kind of determining factor. So if these games mean absolutely zilch for the powerhouse programs when it comes time to build their playoff resumes, why are we playing them to begin with?

Sure the little guys need the cash to stay afloat, but with millions coming in to major college football every year, there has to be a better way to subsidize them than giving fans dozens of bad football games per season. In fact, wouldn’t it stand to reason that more good football games will attract more eyeballs and therefore bring in more advertising revenue?

Bottom line, the irrelevance of these games is a problem.

And now that one of college football’s mainstays has unintentionally admitted that this problem exists, it’s time to begin taking steps to fix it.