LSU Baseball Fans Ask - Who the Heck is McNeese?

The McNeese StateBaseball team is coming to LSU to play the TIGERS this Wednesday.

As usual this midweek in state games is fraught with danger for the Tigers. That is because these players that would have loved to have been recruited by LSU have their day in the sun to get over that snubbing. So these games are close. Do people recall that wild Nicholls State game last year. The one in state school you can never get beat by is the University of Louisiana Lafayette. Because if you get beat by them you never hear the end of it. They are worse than Tulane

Who exactly it is this school named after?
Well it turns out a DAMN Yankee!!! Though LSU cannot talk too much about this since the first Leader of LSU was General Sherman :)

We learn:

McNeese, John (1843-1913). John McNeese was born on July 4, 1843 in New York City to Scottish immigrant parents. He lost his parents at a very young age and was reared by relatives near Baltimore, Maryland. McNeese was a pioneer in Southwest Louisiana Education, serving as the first superintendent of schools in Imperial Calcasieu Parish. McNeese named the McNeese Arena, the McNeese Auditorium, the McNeese Memorial Gymnasium, and the McNeese Room (located in Frazar Memorial Library) after John McNeese. After serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, he moved to Texas seeking a drier climate due to a case of tuberculosis from which he was suffering. He settled in the Coleman County and Menard County area of Texas and became a successful cattle grazer and mercantile businessman. In Menard County he served as the Postmaster (1871) and as the District Clerk (1872-1873). In 1873, he and a few other men set out on a cattle drive to New Orleans via the Old Spanish Trail. The group made it to the Sabine River but the cattle were starving due to drought. McNeese decided to cut his losses by selling his cattle and settling in Imperial Calcasieu. McNeese boarded at the home of William Bilbo and married his daughter, Susan Bilbo on July 4, 1876. McNeese at first supported himself as a professor of penmanship and music. Later he attended Tulane University, receiving a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1887. The next year McNeese became the first superintendent of the public school system in Imperial Calcasieu Parish. He died in 1913 at the age of 70. For more details of McNeese's life, see The Life and Services to Public Education of John McNeese by Theodore John Ratliff.

But how did this South Louisiana team take on the Cowboys as a mascot.?I always assumed it was for the "Cajun" Cowboys in the area. Not everyone in South Louisiana was in the swamps.

We Learn:

Mascot. The first mascot of McNeese was a palomino pony named "Mac" secured for the student body by the "Rally Ranglers". After Mac's demise, several other ponies took his place. The basketball team chose the cowboy as the mascot in the mid 1940s due to the popularity of rodeos and that the McNeese campus was formerly a farm. Later, the school mascot was a student dressed in cowboy gear riding a horse. In 1982, "Rowdy" was born. The Rowdy costume consists of an over-sized, full-length cowboy with a large hat and exaggerated features. The costume includes an ice-pack vest and fan in the top of the hat for ventilation. Rowdy was named after Clint Eastwood's character on the "Rawhide" television show. According to legend, Rowdy was on a cattle drive out west when he stopped in Lake Charles and decided to stay. Rowdy likes to do back-flips, crowd-surf, an ride his trusty ice chest down the hill into the hole at football games.