When I found out I was given the chance to write my first personal opinion column, I laid out a plan for writing about the beauty of sports and the fans that follow them so diligently. That idea soon went out the window after the debacle I witnessed on a muggy Monday night in Baton Rouge.

Being a sports fan foremost, I was disappointed with the Louisiana State-Tennessee game, but I got over it and moved on long after the final Tennessee touchdown.

When I came to campus the next day, the conversation that dominated what seemed to be every corner of the campus was LSU-Tennessee, and that got me thinking, “If the tables were turned, and Nicholls was in the position of being one of the top teams in Division I-AA, would anybody notice?”

With that one moment of clarity I found the topic of my story: fan loyalty.

Since this is my first go-round with Nicholls athletics I will not claim to know everything there is to know about Colonel sports. My first experience came from the Nicholls State-Eastern Washington football game last year.

And what a game to see! In the 37-14 win, the Colonels scored 30 of their 37 points in the first half alone. Defense, offense, you name it, the Colonels did it.

The attendance for that game was 4,731. Granted it was a Thursday night game, but I’m sure Rox’s, The Library and Last Call didn’t mind the excess amount of people that were in town that night.

Two days later, LSU had a home game against Oregon State that was nationally televised, game of the week, the whole nine yards. Or, in this case, 10 yards.

To my surprise I found myself in Baton Rouge, even though it rained so much at the beginning of the game that I think God was trying to tell me that my new name was Noah, and there was an ark behind Tiger Stadium that needed to be manned.

After the rain stopped and the sky opened, the game that was played seemed to have come straight from a Hollywood drama. From the first play to the last drive in overtime, I knew that I had witnessed a classic.

The attendance for that game was 91,828. I wonder how many Nicholls students and alumni were at that game.

If I were to walk around campus and ask knowledgeable students if they knew the capacity of John L. Guidry stadium, they would probably look at me and say, “Who are you?” then answer, “I don’t know.”

Now if I were to ask a good percentage of knowledgeable LSU fans on campus the capacity of Tiger Stadium, more likely than not they would come around the same answer, around 93,000.

It’s amazing that some know more about a school that is a good 71.7 miles away from here than they do about the one they are on at this very moment.

For the record, Guidry stadium has a capacity of 12,800.

The largest crowd that ever saw a Nicholls State game was there in 1981 when the Colonels beat Southern 56-14.

A whopping 14,125 people packed the stadium that day, and that was over 24 years ago. 24!

The closest date that had as many fans was in 1996, when 11,714 saw the Colonels again square off with Jaguars.

Nine of the 15 largest crowds to ever see a Colonels game were against Southern, and they were mostly Southern fans.

Am I saying that you can’t be loyal to the team with which you grew up? Of course not, but we have a team that works just as hard and puts in just as many hours as any other teams in the country, with less exposure, press and, most of all, fanfare.

Sure it’s the Southland Conference, and sure its only in two states, and sure they will only show games on a satellite channel that you can’t get because you have to pay $12 a month to get it.

Wait, that’s my editorial on DirecTV and price gouging; lets move on.

I want to issue a challenge to every student, faculty member, staffer and alum that has anything to do with Nicholls State; if you have not been to one game, try it, and give it a chance; that’s all I ask.

We always talk about being united as one student body, what better way to show that than by coming together on a few Saturday nights.

And maybe under that purple and gold, or green and white, or red and white will be some red and silver.

Well, I guess I did talk about that whole beauty of sports thing a little.