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There are many ways to compare athletic programs.

CBSSports.com claims that its own method of comparison is superior because it “is more reflective of those sports that generate the broadest base of fan and media interest. We rated five sports – football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball and a ‘wild card’ sport.” It considers softball, men’s lacrosse, men’s ice hockey, men’s soccer, wrestling, women’s soccer or women’s gymnastics to be “wild cards.”

CBSSports.com only ranks the FBS schools. FBS is what used to be known as NCAA Division 1-A, the highest level of collegiate athletic competition. The University of �޻���ֱ�� at Lafayette is one of 125 full members.

Jay Walker, a longtime local sportscaster, supports CBSSports.com’s approach. Its equation, he wrote in a recent blog, is “about as equitable a formula as you will get in order to rate the strength of an athletic program.”

There are several factors that make the Ragin’ Cajuns’ 34th place impressive.

One is athletic conferences. In general, there is a long-standing pecking order for the 10 Division 1 FBS conferences. The SEC and PAC-12 are strong conferences because of their top-tier coaches and players, the quality of their facilities, their win-loss records and fan support.

That conference hierarchy is related to a second factor: money. Typically, universities in stronger conferences have larger athletics budgets than schools in weaker conferences, although there are some aberrations from time to time.

So, look at the CBSSports.com ranking and here’s what you’ll find, as Walker noted in his blog.

•  UL Lafayette is the top non-automatic qualifying BCS school in the rankings. The Bowl Championship Series is a system that determines which of the top 10 FBS conferences will compete in bowl games, including who will play in the National Championship game.
•  LSU was No. 9. Tulane was No. 72. �޻���ֱ�� Tech was No. 122.
•  More than 30 programs from schools affiliated with automatic qualifying BCS leagues were ranked below the Ragin’ Cajuns, including five SEC schools: Tennessee, Ole Miss, Georgia, Mississippi State and Arkansas.

Without question, UL Lafayette is in good company.  Consider some teams above it and below it.

• No. 31  Washington
• No. 32  Vanderbilt
• No. 33  Nebraska 
• No. 34  �޻���ֱ��
• No. 35  Penn State 
• No. 36  Tennessee
• No. 37 Iowa 

Budgets mandate how much schools spend to attract coaches, to provide scholarships and to build sports facilities for student-athletes and fans. Many of the nation’s best prospective student-athletes weigh the reputations of coaches and the quality of sports facilities when they’re deciding which university to attend.

Here are the athletics budgets for UL Lafayette and its peers in the CBSSports.com ranking, according to USA Today.

• No. 31 Washington ($85 million)
• No. 32 Vanderbilt (unavailable)
• No. 33 Nebraska  ($86.9 million)
• No. 34  �޻���ֱ�� ($18.1 million)
• No. 35  Penn State  ($104.7 million)
• No. 36  Tennessee ($111.5 million)
• No. 37 Iowa  ($107.1 million)

Although other schools may have bigger budgets, UL Lafayette has come a long way financially.

According to Scott Farmer, UL Lafayette’s director of �޻���ֱ��, the University’s total athletics budget just seven years ago was $9 million, second to last among Division 1 FBS schools.

The Ragin’ Cajuns Athletic Fund was created in 2009 to encourage fans to give badly needed financial support.

The RCAF raised $400,000 the first year. In 2013, it took in $1.6 million. In May, Farmer reported that the RCAF had already surpassed the $1.4 million mark, halfway through the year.

The economic impact of UL Lafayette �޻���ֱ�� is significant. According to the Lafayette Economic Development Authority, the 2013 football season had an economic impact of over $27 million, for example. The three-day NCAA regional softball tournament pumped about $600,000 into the local economy in May, the Lafayette Convention and Visitors Commission estimated.

The �޻���ֱ�� Ragin’ Cajuns have strong fan support. Numbers speak for themselves, as the following examples show.

•  Football fans led the Sun Belt Conference in attendance in 2013, drawing 129,878 fans for five home games. They broke New Orleans Bowl attendance records for the third year in a row in 2013. Last year, fans also smashed the all-time football season ticket sales record.
•  Attendance at �޻���ֱ�� Ragin’ Cajuns baseball games was in the top 10 in the nation, for average and total attendance, for Division 1 FBS schools. Fans set a new school record with total attendance of 145,589 fans at M.L. “Tigue” Moore Field this spring.
•  Facebook collects data that’s useful for analysis. La Louisiane selected the week of July 14-20, a time frame chosen at random, to compare followers of Sun Belt Conference schools. Ragin’ Cajuns �޻���ֱ�� had 60,000 likes. The next six teams’ likes ranged from 12,200 to 15,400.
•   In addition to attending games, loyal fans buy merchandise that carries the registered logos and names of UL Lafayette and the �޻���ֱ�� Ragin’ Cajuns. The University works with Collegiate Licensing Company to manage its licensing program. CLC has about 200 higher education clients.

Each quarter, CLC posts the names of its 75 top-selling institutions. UL Lafayette cracked that elite list two years ago at No. 73. It closed last year at No. 70. It was No. 66 for the third quarter of the 2013-14 fiscal year, the most recent numbers available online. To put that ranking in perspective, Georgetown is No. 64, while the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) is No. 63.

“The strength of our fans goes hand in hand with the strength of our teams,” Farmer summarized recently.

Many �޻���ֱ�� Ragin’ Cajuns fans recognize that the University’s athletics program has been improving gradually but steadily over the past 20 years.

Its intention to continue to compete with other universities for coaches is evident in the latest contract negotiated with head football coach Mark Hudspeth. The engineer of three consecutive victories in postseason bowl games is the highest paid coach in the SBC.

The athletics program’s intention to continue to rise is also evident in a $115 million �޻���ֱ�� Facilities Master Plan that will upgrade facilities for student-athletes and fans. 

Farmer and other officials don’t believe the #34 ranking by CBSSports.com is a fluke.

“Continued success is a circle. Investment leads to quality. Quality leads to success. Success leads to investment and it all begins again,” he said.

On the following pages are a look at the recent achievements of four Ragin’ Cajuns sports.

Baseball

The No. 1 ranked team in the nation. The most victories in college baseball, 58 wins and only 10 losses. Seven players selected in the MLB draft.

The numbers speak volumes. But eye-popping stats fail to tell the entire story of the 2014 season.

Numbers can’t convey how it was a field of dreams, each and every game at “The Tigue.” Fans knew they were witnessing something special, something building and unfolding all at once.

“This is the best Ragin’ Cajuns team I’ve seen so far,” said Gurvis Dupuis, during the decisive third game of the Super Regionals, a do-or-die contest against the Ole Miss Rebels. “They can hit, they can run and they have good pitching. They deserve to be No. 1.” He should know. He’s been a fan since the 1950s. And Gurvis Dupuis didn’t miss a home game this year.

But baseball is a fickle, quirky game of percentages and streaks and more than a little luck. The Cajuns’ bats just weren’t clicking the night of the Ole Miss game. And, unlike so many other games in the season, no player was able to get that one glorious hit that was like a match striking a matchbox, that would generate a spark that would catch the rest of the team on fire.

The Ragin’ Cajuns lost that game to Ole Miss and, with it, the chance to take a trip to the College World Series, where many fans believed they rightfully belonged.

Long after the final out, the players lingered in the outfield, one last time. They knew they were spending their last moments together as a team. Many fans remained in the bleachers long after the final out, too. At last, they stood and gave their boys a standing ovation because they knew they had never seen baseball so good.

Softball

The Ragin’ Cajuns made winning the NCAA Super Regional Tournament look easy.

Anyone who didn’t know about their opponent, the Arizona Wildcats, would have wondered why the 7-1 victory was a big deal. But plenty of the 2,693 fans who packed Lamson Park understood. The Wildcats have one of the most successful programs in the history of softball. They hold eight national championships.

Going into the best-of-three series, Arizona led the nation in home runs per game. The Ragin’ Cajuns were second. So, defeating such a powerhouse to advance to the Women’s College World Series, for the sixth time, was especially sweet.

That dominant performance came on the heels of winning the Sun Belt Conference regular season and SBC tournament championships. The Cajuns hosted and won the NCAA Regional Tournament before hosting their first NCAA Super Regional in school history.

The Cajuns headed to the Women’s College World Series. While they were there, pitcher Christina Hamilton’s lens-less, black-frame glasses caught the media’s attention and triggered television coverage of Cajun fans wearing the same quirky spectacles to show their support.

The Ragin’ Cajuns fell to Kentucky and Oklahoma in the World Series. But when all the dust had settled, the Cajuns held the No. 8 ranking in USA Today and ESPN postseason polls.

Now, fans are licking their chops at the prospect of a return trip to the WCWS in 2015. No wonder: next season’s roster will be the same, minus only two seniors, Natalie Fernandez and Shelbi Redfearn, who graduated in May.

Basketball

The Ragin’ Cajuns’ journey to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2005 was as exciting as it was improbable. The season began with an inspirational slogan: “Our Mission Is March.” At the midway point, with a 12-11 record, the mission seemed impossible.

But good players can orchestrate surprising comebacks, and that’s what the Cajuns did. They reeled off 11 wins in their last 13 games, adding an exclamation point with an 82-81 overtime victory over Georgia State to earn the Sun Belt Conference Tournament championship and a trip to the NCAA Tournament.

The story-within-the-story was Elfrid Payton, a John Ehret High School graduate who was recruited by only two universities: Xavier University of �޻���ֱ�� and UL Lafayette. Head coach Bob Marlin saw something in Payton that other coaches missed. More important, he made sure Payton had a chance to grow in an arena much bigger than the Cajundome. Marlin helped him get a tryout for the U19 Men’s USA Basketball team. Payton made the squad, which won the gold medal at the 2013 FIBA World Championship. The young man plucked from obscurity paid Marlin back by playing hard and soaking up everything he could about playing the game of basketball at an elite level.

What was good for Payton was good for the team. The electrifying point guard’s shoot-from-the-hip play contributed to the Cajuns’ remarkable run.

UL Lafayette fell to Creighton in the second round of the NCAA championship tournament, but not before it showed a nationwide television audience that Ragin’ Cajuns don’t give up.

Payton then made a run of his own. The No. 10 overall pick in the NBA draft was quickly making waves for the Orlando Magic in summer league play. Just like Marlin knew he would.

Football

When Nicholls State fell 70-7 in the home opener, �޻���ֱ�� Ragin’ Cajuns fans knew the demolition signaled no guarantee of a third straight R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl win and yet another nine-win season.

Yet, that’s what happened, and the Cajuns notched a Sun Belt Conference championship, to boot. The Cajuns are one of only six teams in the nation to win three consecutive bowl games. The others? Florida State, Michigan State, Oregon, South Carolina and Texas A&M.

Its 17-man senior class won a school-record 30 games in a four-year period. And, in the past seven semesters, the Cajuns turned in six of the best semesters academically that they’ve had since the University started tracking grades in 1982.

Now, their bid for a fourth straight bowl, and a possible fourth straight nine-win or better season, is only a few weeks away. Head coach Mark Hudspeth, is entering his fourth season with 15 starters returning, including quarterback Terrance Broadway, the conference preseason Offensive Player of the Year selection. Broadway is hardly alone on the preseason all-conference team, which is chosen by coaches and members of the media. Nine of his teammates also made the cut.

Athlon Sports, the nation’s largest publisher of sports annuals, expects the Cajuns to equal last year’s regular season win total in conference play alone, predicting a perfect 8-0 record against SBC opponents.

A recent preseason poll of SBC coaches was unanimous. They believe the Ragin’ Cajuns will earn their second conference championship by the time the referee’s whistle is blown for the last time at the end of the season.