UL Lafayette Athletic Director Scott Farmer came on Bumper to Bumper Sports with Ben Love to talk about the Ragin Cajuns heading into the 2016 season and more importantly about goals.
“If one conference that has a higher profile calls, that’ll be something that Joe Savoie and I will have to discuss” Farmer said, “It’s our position that we can meet all of our goals in the Sun Belt Conference.”
Let’s look at the last part of that quote. The Cajuns according to Farmer could meet all of their “goals” in the Sun Belt Conference. But what are their goals? The ultimate goal of any of the group of five schools is to move up to one of the Power Five conferences. With the expansion talk with the Big 12, there could be some teams moving over to the more powerful Group of Five schools. For instance, the American Athletic Conference which is probably the strongest of the Group of Five, has a potential candidate in Houston and maybe Tulane. This leaves vacancies for smaller teams to fill. This has to be the first step for any of these teams that could get the call to the show as the first step toward getting to one of the Power Five conferences. The Cajuns could be one of those teams. With all the improvements made not only on the campus but in the Athletic Master Plan, they look a lot better than they did a few years ago when Conference USA was rumored to be interested. You have a brand-new Athletic Performance Center, an improved football field, the Cajundome is being renovated, and the Tigue is also in the process of being rebuilt. That’s a lot of things that these bigger conferences look at.
Back to the goals that Farmer talked about for a second. He mentioned that he could achieve what they want to do in the conference. It just sounds like the Cajuns want to continue being the big fish in a small pond. The Cajuns have become a baseball and softball powerhouse over the last few years and football is doing great since Mark Hudspeth arrived on campus. With all that there, a move to a slightly bigger pond like C-USA or American Athletic Conference seems inevitable based off this success.
Could this mean that the Cajuns are fine with being in the conference for the next five years? Possibly, but like Farmer said if a conference is calling you about joining up with them, you’ve got to at least entertain the call and based off of what was said, that sounds like something they would do.
-Clint Domingue