The reason UH is trying to dump us from their schedule is simple: Saban recruits the Houston area VERY, VERY well!!! A whipping at the hands of our Tigers is the last thing they want recruits in the Houston area to look at.
true that.... The whole Texas area and beyond these days.. props to Saban and his staff.. looks as if LSU is only getting stronger
I say screw 'em. They have a contract and we should force them to honor it. Doesn't it seems stupid to play OU, though? Doesn't Oklahoma recruit Texas big-time?
Houston will not back out of the contract unless LSU finds a replacement. Here's the article from The Advocate... http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/022704/spo_houston001.shtml
We can't force them to play us, all they have to do is pay the $175,000 buyout and there gone from the schedule, it's as simple as that. Hopefully the new contracts have a REAL large buyout in them.
Here's what I don't understand. The game against Virginia Tech could have been the Black Coaches Association game and been moved up a week (it ended up being VT and USC). That also would have given both us and VT an additional game. One of the things I heard was the SEC does not allow its teams to play in the "pre-season games" due to the fact that we have a conference championship game. The other thing was that because CBS has right of first refusal to televise any game where the SEC is the home team, that conflicted with the BCA game because it has an agreement with ESPN. So when I read that ESPN may televise the Oregon State game, I wondered why can they televise it when CBS has first dibs. Or have they already passed on it?
I had heard or read somewhere back when the Oregon State deal was completed that LSU was trying to negotiate to play Syracuse instead of Houston. There were some conflicts as to If Syracuse would be able to play LSU due to other scheduling conflicts, but they wanted the revenue they could draw from the SEC since the Big East basically dissolved into a crap conference. I would not be surprised if this deal goes through that Syracuse comes to Tiger Stadium for an ass whoopin. It will be a good tradeoff since Syracuse and Houston are fairly equal in a competitive sense, but Syracuse carries a larger stigma to their name. Houston has not been a national name or player since the David Klinger days.
Syracuse would definitely be an upgrade in SOS of prestige. I would hate to have to pull against them so soon after they became my new "second favorite" team for beating the daylights out of inept Notre Dame, but oh, well... Of course, Syracuse has a RB who really lit up the Irish. He was impressive.
