This is the first entry in what will be a recurring series making the case of why we should care about each of Tech’s new Sun Belt conference mates. We’re going in order of distance from Ruston, spiraling outward one opponent at a time. Which means this week we start with our neighbors just down I-20.
As of Wednesday morning, Louisiana Tech is officially in the Sun Belt. And with that move comes a lot of changes, but one of the best is that we get to play ULM on a regular schedule again.
For a quarter century, the geographically closest rivalry Tech has was essentially left to gather dust. The Bulldogs and Warhawks haven’t met on a football field since 2000. An entire generation of Tech students has grown up 35 miles from Monroe without a single good reason to care. But that ends now, as Tech football will travel to Malone Stadium on October 17th.
So consider this your reintroduction. Here is why Louisiana Tech fans should hate ULM.
Reason 1: The Monroe Doctrine
Grievance Rating: 3/10
In 1823, US President James Monroe laid claim to the entire Western Hemisphere as America’s sphere of influence, a backyard where one power set the terms and everyone else fell in line. And Louisiana Tech has spent 70 years running a version of that policy in North Louisiana.
The issue really is that it’s hard to hate a team you have consistently beat.
Football is the cleanest case of that dominance. Tech leads the all-time series 29-14 and won 20 of the first 25 meetings. The last time the two played, Tech won 42-19 in Monroe in 2000 and left for the WAC riding a six-game winning streak that has now sat frozen for a quarter century.
Men’s basketball tells the same story. Tech leads 57-36 all-time, and the Bulldogs haven’t lost to ULM since 1991. That’s 11 straight, a streak spanning more than three decades. Which means no current ULM traditional student was alive the last time the Warhawks beat Tech on the hardwood. And the Thomas Assembly Center has been a house of horrors for Monroe, where Tech is 35-11.
The Lady Techsters make it a clean sweep of the hardwood. Tech’s women lead ULM 49-11 all-time, a series so lopsided it barely qualifies as a rivalry. This is a Techsters program that reached the sport’s mountaintop long before most schools took women’s basketball seriously, and ULM has spent the series on the wrong end of it.
Baseball is where the ledger gets interesting. Tech leads the all-time series 80-56, but the diamond is the one place Monroe keeps things competitive. The series stayed alive as an annual I-20 matchup even while football went dark, and ULM has landed real punches: in 2023 the Warhawks swept the season series for the first time since 2005, including an 8-5 win in Ruston. But even if the Warhawks sweep the now three-game weekend series every year, they wouldn’t even the all-time series until 2034.
So, for 70 years, Tech has been the region’s dominant power. And now, for the first time since 2000, the Warhawks will have a chance to test that authority.
Reason 2: The 2012 Independence Bowl
Grievance Rating: 6/10
In 2012, Tech went 9-3 with the best offense in the country. The Bulldogs led the nation in scoring at 51.5 points per game and in total offense. But because of late season losses to #16 Utah State and #21 San Jose State, Tech fell to third in the WAC standings – a conference that only had guaranteed bowl tie-ins for their top two teams.
The Independence Bowl approached Louisiana Tech in the week before conference championship weekend to invite the Bulldogs to play against ULM in Shreveport. At the time, Tech had only ever played in six bowl games and four of those were the Independence Bowl. Wanting to see what else would become available after all the games had been played, Tech asked for more time.
But the dominoes fell the wrong way. When Northern Illinois crashed the BCS and Oklahoma missed out, the resulting chain reaction pushed Iowa State out of the Heart of Dallas Bowl and into the Liberty Bowl, taking the seat Tech thought it had. And by that point, the Independence Bowl had already taken Ohio.
So the Bulldogs, owners of the nation’s top offense, played in no bowl at all. It was a self-inflicted disaster.
But in Monroe, Tech’s refusal to sign up for the Independence Bowl early was considered a slight. Warhawk fans pushed the narrative that Tech was too scared, or too proud, to play ULM. So the hatred of ULM here doesn’t come from Tech missing the bowl game, it comes from the attitude of a fanbase that didn’t let a 45-14 loss to Ohio in that Independence Bowl distract from pushing the idea that Tech was avoiding them.
Reason 3: Giving the World Delta Airlines
Grievance Rating: 4/10
Delta Air Lines started in Monroe. It grew out of a crop-dusting outfit called Huff Daland Dusters that set up shop in Monroe in 1925 to fight the boll weevil, got bought out by local investors, and was reincorporated as Delta Air Service, named for the Mississippi Delta region it served. Monroe was Delta’s headquarters until 1941, when the airline packed up and left for Atlanta, presumably to get closer to the hub where it would one day strand you.
Monroe is proud of this history. The airport complex greets you as the “Birthplace of Delta Air Lines.”
So the next time you are power-walking a half-mile between gates in Hartsfield-Jackson, after the gate for your connecting flight was moved to an entirely different terminal, you can blame Monroe. Or at least I will.
Reason 4: Complicit in ULL's Name Game
Grievance Rating: 8/10
Every time an ESPN announcer says “Louisiana” and means Louisiana-Lafayette, you can thank ULM.
Under a 1995 state law, a University of Louisiana System school could only rebrand if at least two schools did it together. So when Southwestern Louisiana pushed to rename in 1999 to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, it needed a partner. Northeast Louisiana University tagged along, becoming ULM.
It didn’t stop there. Years later, when Lafayette petitioned the Sun Belt to be referred to simply as “Louisiana,” the change required other conference members to agree. Any member school could have objected, and yet none did.
And you can read more about this whole kerfuffle here.
Reason 5: The Ed Jackson Bowl
Grievance Rating: 9/10
After the 1978 season, longtime head coach Maxie Lambright stepped down. Tech had an obvious in-house candidate in Pat Collins, who had played and coached for the Bulldogs under Joe Aillet and stayed on staff under Lambright. But Tech passed Collins over and hired an outsider instead: Arkansas assistant Larry Beightol.
And when Beightol was fired less than a season into his tenure, another outsider (Billy Brewer) was brought in from Southeastern. So Pat Collins, tired of waiting, took a head coaching role just down the street.
And before Collins’ first game against his alma mater as ULM’s head coach, Bulldog star linebacker Ed Jackson was ruled ineligible having already exhausted his four years playing college football. Tech fans accused Collins of turning Jackson into the Southland Conference, and the fury got ugly enough that the state athletic commissioner offered Collins a police escort into Ruston after death threats came in.
Years later, Collins admitted he’d had a hand in getting Jackson ruled ineligible, and that the eligibility problem traced back to him in the first place. He was the Tech assistant who had played Jackson as a true freshman, over Maxie Lambright’s objection. “I’m the one who got chewed out by Maxie Lambright for playing him as a freshman,” Collins recalled. “I can still hear him: ‘I told you not to play that boy.'” So the man who started Jackson’s eligibility clock at Tech turned around and used its expiration to sideline him in a game against Tech.
It worked, and then some. Against a backdrop of derogatory signs aimed at Collins inside Joe Aillet Stadium, ULM throttled Tech 35-0 in what became known as the “Ed Jackson Bowl.”
It got worse before it got better. Collins spent eight seasons in Monroe and went 6-2 against the school that raised him. Tech would right the ship and win seven of the next eight, but the damage was done.
The Reunion
Back in 2023, Tech and ULM announced a home-and-home football series for 2030 and 2031. But the Sun Belt move made it moot. Tech and ULM are conference opponents now, in every sport, every year, starting immediately. Football no longer needs to wait until the end of the decade.
Welcome back to the schedule, Monroe. We’ve missed hating you.