By GLENN GUILBEAU
Tiger Rag Editor
Former LSU athletic director Skip Bertman was sitting among a few writers, as he was wont to do, in the pressbox shortly before the Tigers kicked off the 2008 football season against Appalachian State in Tiger Stadium.
“Do you realize what is happening today?,” he asked.
Dumbfounded, none of the writers could come up with anything significant.
“Appalachian State just flew in yesterday from Boone, North Carolina, to play us, and they passed by McNeese State’s football team in the air flying from Lake Charles, Louisiana, to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to play North Carolina,” Bertman said. “How stupid is that? Shouldn’t McNeese State be playing here, and Appalachian State be playing at North Carolina?”
Good point. No wonder that dude won five national championships in 10 years from 1991 through 2000 as LSU’s baseball coach. Then as LSU athletic director from 2001-09, Bertman hired four coaches who won national championships – Les Miles in football in the 2007 season, track coach Dennis Shaver with the women’s outdoor team in 2008, Paul Mainieri in baseball in 2009 and Chuck Winstead in men’s golf in 2015.
Two years later in 2010, McNeese – located two hours west of Baton Rouge in Lake Charles – played LSU for the first time in football in Tiger Stadium and met again in 2021.
But Bertman, with the help of associate athletic director Verge Ausberry over the years, had been bringing his state together on fall Saturdays for football since he became AD after retiring following the 2001 season as baseball coach, a job in which he made it a habit to play in-state schools home and away.
On Saturday, the last four-year college in the state of Louisiana that plays football that has never played LSU will play LSU. Kickoff is at 6:30 p.m. between No. 18 LSU (0-1) and Nicholls State (0-1), located 68 miles away in Thibodaux.
Bertman saw to it that Louisiana-Lafayette – just 50 minutes away – played LSU in 2002 at Tiger Stadium for that pair’s first meeting since 1938. LSU and ULL played again in 2006 and 2009 at LSU. He had the series with Louisiana Tech renewed in 2003 after no games since 1941, and they met again in 2007, 2009 and 2018 at LSU.
He kept Tulane coming to Tiger Stadium in 2006, 2008 and 2009 with a game in New Orleans as well in 2007. LSU had played Tulane, a former member of the Southeastern Conference, only once after 1996 before the 2006 game. The two programs met every season from 1898 through 1994.
Also in 2003, Bertman was behind the first Louisiana-Monroe game against LSU anywhere, and they met again in Tiger Stadium in 2010, 2014 and 2021. Bertman had transitioned to athletic director emeritus by 2011, but his philosophy continued on as Northwestern State played LSU in 2011 for the first time since 1942. The Demons returned in 2019.
The trend continued under athletic director Joe Alleva as Southeastern Louisiana – 45 minutes away in Hammond – played LSU in 2018 for the first time since 1949. Not long after Scott Woodward, a good friend of Bertman’s for decades, replaced Alleva in 2019, Woodward made history by scheduling a game against Southern University – just 10 miles away from LSU in Baton Rouge – in 2022. And Grambling from the Ruston area played its first game against LSU in 2023.
Nicholls State was originally going to play at LSU in the 2020 season, but the game was canceled due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
“I’m proud that they will now have played every state school with football,” Bertman said from his home in Baton Rouge on Friday. “I was really glad I was able to start that, and the athletic directors that followed me kept that going. I always thought it made sense.”
It made business sense, which was always a hallmark of Bertman’s baseball program in addition to all the championships. It was one of the few baseball programs in the country that did not lose money in his early years, and one of the few that made a lot of money in later years as his team hosted NCAA Regionals every season from 1990 through 2001.
“If you play an in-state school, the fans from that school have an easier trip to Baton Rouge, so they’re going to buy tickets and go to the game,” Bertman said. “Plus, we pay them a lot less money to come to us than we’d pay many out-of-state schools get because it is a cheaper trip. The money we do pay them stays in the state instead of going out of state. And – this is very important – the fans from Nicholls or ULL or McNeese get to spend the day on our campus. We get to show them what we’re about. It always was a win-win.”
Much like his baseball teams.
Here is LSU’s all-time record against each in-state school it has played over the years with the years of the first and last meeting.
Centenary (Shreveport) … 3-1-1 (1894, 1933).
Grambling (greater Ruston area) … 1-0 (2023).
Louisiana College (Pineville) … 2-0 (1928, 1929).
Louisiana-Lafayette … 22-0 (1902, 2009).
Louisiana-Monroe … 4-0 (2003, 2021).
Louisiana Tech (Ruston) … 19-1 (1901, 2018).
Loyola (New Orleans) … 4-1 (1939) … no longer plays football.
McNeese State (Lake Charles) … 2-0 (2010, 2021).
Northwestern State (Natchitoches) … 12-0 (1911, 2019).
Southeastern Louisiana (Hammond) … 2-0 (1949, 2018).
Southern (Baton Rouge) … 1-0 (2022).
Tulane (New Orleans) … 69-22-7 (1893 in LSU’s first game, 2009).
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