When Blaine McCorkle speaks at the annual Independence Bowl/Northwestern State Kickoff Luncheon today at Superior’s Steakhouse, the Demons’ third-year football coach may not mention the rare opportunity ahead for fans at NSU’s season opener in Turpin Stadium next Thursday night.
He’ll cover at least half of it, the football part. He might not mention the moon.
A week from tonight brings a partial lunar eclipse and something far more rare, the Northwestern State football team playing the Louisiana Christian Wildcats.
The eclipse should start in the fourth quarter, about 9:30. May be the most interesting thing happening at that point, if the Demons have their way.
Generally we get 2-3 partial or full moon eclipses every year. We haven’t seen NSU vs. LC since before Neil Armstrong took man’s first steps on the lunar surface. Ten months earlier, the Demons dumped the Wildcats 39-14, and LC dumped football entirely.
That was it, for the next 58 years. Maybe this year’s reunion was predestined. It’s precisely 58 miles from the Louisiana Christian campus to Turpin Stadium, says Mapquest.
The ‘60s were the last of the good ole days when what was forever known as Louisiana College played Louisiana Tech, McNeese, Southeastern and Northwestern. The Wildcats were in the Gulf States Conference for years, until the Pineville college discontinued its football program after the ’68 season. It was dormant for more than 30 years, until it rekindled around the turn of the century.
It took a few seasons for the Wildcats to get their footing, but Dennis Dunn, now in his 11th season steering the powerhouse North DeSoto High School program, was the architect of the recovery. From 2005-17, he lifted LC to unprecedented success, with a 65-45 record in his 11 seasons on the Pineville campus.
Maybe his best player was quarterback Ben McLaughlin, whose name is all over the Wildcats’ offensive records for piling up passing yards and touchdowns, along with wins, from 2006-10. Not a shock: beginning with his 14 seasons (1992-2005) leading Evangel’s Eagles to their greatest heights, Dunn’s quarterbacks put up big numbers.
Now McLaughlin is coaching his alma mater, and in his second fall last year, produced a Sooner Athletic Conference championship in an 8-3 season. The Wildcats have bounced between NCAA Division III and lately, NAIA membership in football.
Yikes! The FCS (used to be called Division I-AA, still should be) Demons are playing an NAIA team?
Finally. Most of their Southland Conference rivals have regularly done it for years – teams like North American (in Houston, if you didn’t know), Bethel, Bacone, McMurry, Lincoln, Texas College … that’s just who Lamar has played. McNeese opened last season with a 54-9 rout over Louisiana Christian. In McLaughlin’s 2024 debut season, Houston Christian plastered the Wildcats 70-7.
McCorkle doesn’t expect a walk-over like that, although he surely hopes for one.
The game is happening because at every level of college sports, with every kind of ball, games like this happen. It’s good business, if not good matchups.
The visitors pick up a nice guarantee check for making the trip, and the home team almost always wins, gets to play the backups, “create depth,” and build confidence. The visiting players can build confidence too as they win some individual battles against what are generally bigger, stronger, faster and perceived to be more talented opponents, better than they’ll encounter in conference games.
It can be, and will be, a win-win. The same rationale is true but the kicking shoe is on the other foot in the Demons’ second game, when they visit Ruston and Louisiana Tech opens its season. Then the Bulldogs go into Tiger Stadium on Sept. 12 … there’s a food chain.
Outcomes are not predestined. Tech battled LSU for four quarters last year, just after Southeastern gave the Bulldogs fits a week before. Demon fans will forever treasure going to Aillet Stadium and enjoying a pre-planned postgame fireworks display, set to Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration,” after NSU’s 30-27 walk-off upset Sept. 20, 2014.
This NSU-LCU matchup may not intrigue many past the ardent fans of both schools and the teams involved, but bet your bottom dollar David Orr and Byron Dawson are interested. Centenary’s AD and football coach would love the chance to head down I-49 to Natchitoches and collect a relatively hefty payout like the Wildcats will.
The Gents aren’t ready quite yet, still wobbly as they play their third season back from the cobwebs of an even longer stall dating back to the late 1940s. Perhaps before the end of this decade Centenary and LCU might strike up an I-49 rivalry, and maybe along the same timeline, we might see Dawson’s team teeing it up in Turpin Stadium.
The games may not be close. But playing them is really good for both sides.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com