A highly anticipated non-conference series in college football has been called off.
On3’s Brett McMurphy reported on Monday that the home-and-home series between the LSU Tigers and Arizona State Sun Devils has been canceled.
“With the SEC moving to a nine-game league schedule this season, several SEC schools have been adjusting their future schedules by dropping non-conference Power 4 opponents,” McMurphy reports.
While the two schools have little in common geographically, they share a prominent former player: Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels.
Daniels may be a California native, but he played his first three seasons at Arizona State before transferring to Baton Rouge for his final two years.
Daniels ultimately won the Heisman Trophy in his final season with the Tigers, as well as a litany of other awards like the Walter Camp, Manning and Johnny Unitas Golden Arm.
He earned some awards with Arizona State as well though, including twice being named Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Week and MVP of the 2019 Sun Bowl, in which the Sun Devils beat the Florida State Seminoles 20-14.
His finest moment in Tempe was likely the first of his POTW honors, when the Sun Devils upset No. 6 Oregon 31-28 at home, efficiently ending the Ducks’ title hopes in 2019.
A Decades-Long Saga Comes to an End
As McMurphy reports, this series had been in the works long before Daniels became a football star, and while they got one game in, the Sun Devils never got to play in Death Valley.
“The teams were originally to play in 2005 in Baton Rouge, La., but the game at Tiger Stadium was moved to Arizona State after LSU’s campus was unable to host the game because of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” McMurphy wrote.
LSU took that game 35-31 behind a 28-point fourth quarter.
The schools were then set to play in 2015 and 2016, though LSU had to again adjust the series so the Tigers could face Wisconsin at Lambeau Field.
The new dates? 2029 and 2030, the now-canceled games.
This leaves LSU as the winner of the lone time the two schools have ever played.
Perhaps one day, Arizona State will get a chance to even the series, but for now, they’ll have to live with that loss.