BATON ROUGE — The athletic directors of LSU and Southern met Wednesday to discuss the possibility of a meeting between those schools in a future football game.
The meeting between LSU athletics director Skip Bertman and Southern athletics director Floyd Kerr was scheduled after the Southern Board of Supervisors had directed Kerr to begin discussions about a future football meeting between the two Baton Rouge universities.
“We enjoy a tremendous relationship with our counterparts at Southern and I enjoyed meeting with Floyd today,” Bertman said. “At this time, LSU’s primary focus is to schedule Division I-A opponents, and Floyd was very understanding of that. Although it is highly unlikely we will play in the near future, Floyd and I have left the door open for future discussions.”
The Tigers currently have openings on its 2004 and 2005 home football schedules.
“It is very clear that strength of schedule is a major component of the Bowl Championship Series rankings, and if we are going to continue to play at this level of competition, we have to schedule accordingly,” Bertman said. “Unfortunately, that allows us to only schedule Division I-AA opponents as a matter of last recourse.
“LSU and Southern play in a number of other varsity sports and I believe that is a positive arrangement for both of our schools and the Baton Rouge community,” Bertman said. “We wish Southern the best of luck for the remainder of the football season and look forward to meeting them in other sports in the coming months and years.”