As first reported in FBSchedules.com and confirmed to the American Press by McNeese State Athletic Director Heath Schroyer Sunday, the Cowboys have signed to play Lamar in a four-game football series.

The home-and-home series with the Cardinals will start no later than the 2025 season. Exact seasons for the series will be determined and likely depend on conference schedules.

“To be able to secure a home-and-home with opponents who are real rivals is something that I have bene trying to do and am happy Lamar has agreed,” Schroyer said. “This is great for our football program and our fans.

“It helps in managing the budget and keeping local interest in our games. This is something we feel we need to do and are looking to do more.”

Schroyer also confirmed that the Cowboys agreed to play Southern University at home on Aug. 31 to open the 2024 season. McNeese will play at Southern this year in Week 3 on Sept. 18 at 6 p.m.

McNeese is 2-0 against Southern, last winning 34-28 to open the 2019 season inside Cowboy Stadium. The first meeting was in Baton Rouge, a 35-18 McNeese win in 2004. The teams were supposed to play in Lake Charles in 2005 but the game was cancelled due to hurricane Rita. They were unable to agree on a makeup date at the time.

The 2019 game in Lake Charles drew a Cowboy Stadium record crowd of 20,437. The 2024 contest will be a return for this year’s game in Baton Rouge.

McNeese was originally scheduled to play a home-and-home series with Youngstown State on the same dates as the Southern games this fall and 2024. However, McNeese and Youngstown State mutually agreed to cancel that series according to Schroyer.

“We think playing games with regional interest is important to keeping our costs down,” said Schroyer. 

McNeese’s FBS money game this year is in Week 2 at LSU. Next season the Cowboys will travel to Houston to play Rice. 

In 2023 the Cowboys will visit the Swamp in Gainesville, Florida and be back in the Southeastern Conference the following year playing at Texas A&M. McNeese also has a home-and-home with Alcorn State in back-to-back years starting at Cowboy Stadium in 2022. 

McNeese has a deal for home-and-home games against Tarleton State in 2023-24 with the first one in Lake Charles. The two teams opened the spring season with a Cowboy victory.

McNeese holds a 27-11-1 series advantage over Lamar dating back to the first meeting in Nov. of 1951 in Lake Charles. The Cowboys have won eight of the 11 games played since the Cardinals brought back football in 2010. Lamar won this spring 27-26 in overtime in Cowboy Stadium. 

Lamar and four other schools left the Southland Conference at the end in June. The Cardinals, along with three other Texas universities, moved to the Western Athletic Conference. 

“Right when they left I wanted to work with Lamar to keep the rivalry going,” said Schroyer, who said playing other former SLC programs is not out of the question in the future. 

“We will do what is best for our program and our fans,” he said. 

Of course, the rivalry could be renewed sooner considering all the conference shifting going on in college sports.

“No matter what happens, we want to keep playing local schools with have history with for our fans,” said Schroyer.

For now, the Battle for the Border is back.