Last year the Sun Belt Conference decided that the final weekend of the baseball season would be "Rivalry Weekend." They scheduled the two Arkansas schools, the two Florida schools, the two Alabama schools, Western and Middle, and UNO and Louisiana to close the regular season facing off against each other.
Only one problem. The best rivalry wasn't played that weekend.
There simply isn't a better Sun Belt rivalry than the Cajuns and Jaguars. In any sport.
And, on a weekend in the middle of the season, when neither team was fighting for a championship (now THAT'S unusual), the rivalry continued last weekend.
And anyone who was in Mobile over the weekend will tell you, it was no less intense than if the two teams were fighting for first place.
The Jags/Cajuns rivalry started for real in 1991, when USL eliminated USA from the Baton Rouge regional. Jag pitchers hit two Cajuns intentionally, but the Cajuns got the win.
The following year, the two teams were joined forever in the Sun Belt. The teams played three nonconference games at the end of the season (the SBC had divisional play then, and not everyone played during the season). The Jags won all three. By one run. The teams fought.....literally, with a bench clearing brawl. That was the start of a painful time for Cajun fans, as the Jags started a seventeen game winning streak, with many decided by one run.
In 1997 the tide started to turn as the Cajuns started to win against USA. But, at the end of the season, the Cajuns watched the Jags celebrate at TIgue Moore FIeld after winning the conference tournament. But in 1998, the Cajuns returned the favor in Mobile.
In 2000 the Cajuns won a series for the first time in Mobile. In 2003 the two teams played on the final weekend and the Jags took two out of three at the Tigue to win the title. In 2006 the Cajuns eliminated the Jags from the conference tournament and last year beat South Alabama five straight times, including twice in Mobile in the SBC Tournament.
More of the same this weekend.......the two teams got after each other on the field and with their rhetoric. The fans got after each other as well. And, in the end, the Cajuns won two of three with a gutty performance on Sunday.
And, as the teams shook hands at the end, they knew that another chapter in the rivalry had been written.
It's an absolute shame that these teams, the two best programs that Sun Belt Baseball has to offer, don't play in the final weekend. Because, even if they aren't fighting for a championship (and it's rare that they aren't), it brings the regular season to a rightful conclusion.
A rivalry unlike no other.
Regardless of what the Conference office legislates.