September 19, 2005
Vols rebuffed as Saturday night football returns to Baton Rouge
Life in Louisiana will become a tad more normal for the LSU-crazed state, as Saturday night football--a long-cherished Louisiana tradition--returns this weekend. SEC commissioner Mike Slive ignored Tennessee's request to play earlier in the day this coming Saturday. Concerns over the availability of hotel rooms for fans and the team had been raised by UT officials.
Slive said:
"The conference didn't have to take any action of any kind. It's been our longstanding policy that the home team picks the time of the game, so we respected that. That gets changed by television if that was to happen — in this case, ESPN picked up the game. So the time stayed at what it was.''
LSU AD Skip Bertman, who insisted that the game be held at night, said:
"We can get back to some type of normalcy we're used to here and get a Saturday night in Tiger Stadium where we can turn our guys lose and turn the fans lose and for a brief time, three, four, maybe six hours, people can forget some serious, serious problems."
ESPN is reportedly renting a passenger riverboat for its television personalities and crew to stay on while in Baton Rouge, and is said to have offered lodging space on the vessel for the Vols team and staff. UT apparently rebuffed that offer, as they are expected to fly in on the morning of the game.
Commissioner Slive pointed out that on numerous occasions in the past, teams have requested evening start times for game in Knoxville, yet the Vols remained insistant on afternoon starts. He also alluded to the fact that a number of SEC teams--and not just Tennessee--have been inconvenienced by Hurricane Katrina. LSU, of course, lost a home game and had to postpone another. Conference schools in MIssissippi and Alabama lost valuable practice time as strong storms pelted their campuses, and fans of several SEC schools were asked to forfeit hotel reservations for game weekends to make way for hurricane refugees.
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