Troy-LSU non-September game update
September 03, 2008
Talked to Troy head coach Larry Blakeney and reccently A.D. Steve Dennis.
“We were thinking this would happen all along,” Blakeney said. “Certainly college football pales in comparison to what’s going on down there. We were just waiting for the word, really. We assumed this would happen.”
Blakeney said he wasn’t privy to discussions of moving the game to another date, say Monday or so, or moving it to another location such as the Superdome. I did ask him if he knew if Troy asked LSU to move the game to Troy.
“Steve had the nerve to ask them that,” Blakeney said. “Then they’d have to refund 92,000 tickets and I don’t think they wanted to do that.”
Troy would have obviously not taken the large payout that they’d be getting (I think it’s 800K) and would honor LSU tickets, but that would be a logistical nightmare if 91,000 people invaded Troy.
But they did try, and that’s important I think. In the end, it was all about what LSU wanted, as it should have been since it was LSU’s home game. The common open date for both teams made it that much more convienient.
4:37 p.m. update - Steve Dennis returned my call. He said the talks of moving the game to the Superdome or to Sunday or Monday weren’t really serious because of the logistics of the whole deal and the fact that Baton Rouge took such a hard hit. Logistics of moving the game to Troy wouldn’t be easy, either. Troy is excited about the upcoming game with Alcorn State and ready to play LSU Nov. 15.
“We just take what the good Lord gives us and move on,” Dennis said.
