Last fall, Ray Beasock of The Ledger wrote a great feature questioning why Southeastern and Florida Southern don’t compete against each other in athletics. As a former SEU employee, I know it mostly comes down to Florida Southern not wanting to do it.

Maybe the administration thinks SEU is below their competition level, maybe they don’t want to throw the other local school a bone, maybe they don’t see any benefit to winning but problems if they lose (which would be a major upset, if we’re going to be honest). Whatever the reason, I wholeheartedly agree with Ray that the schools should find some way to compete.

Rivalries are fun, and to have athletic events between two private schools that are literally 5 minutes apart would be pretty cool for the community.

I don’t want to rehash Ray’s article, but I did want to do a fun post of what we could call the rivalry when (if?) it ever happens. So here we go, the top 10 names for the future SEU-FSC rivalry (for reference, Florida Southern is the Moccasins and SEU is the Fire):

1. Snakes and Flames Challenge
2. Rattle and Burn Cup
3. Publix Cup – never hurts to have a title sponsor
4. Battle for Lakeland
5. Bartow Highway Braggin’ Rights
6. Mayor’s Cup
7. Lake-to-Lake Championship
8. Lakeshore Showdown
9. Lakeland College Cup
10. What Took Us So Long to Play? Cup