Lake Charles and McNeese State are reeling from the brutal impact of Hurricane Laura, leaving residents feeling forgotten in a year dominated by other headlines.
LAKE CHARLES, La. — They call Cowboy Stadium “The Hole” because it plunges into the ground.
This place is sacred, an archaic cathedral to college football, protected on all four sides by mounds of earth guarding this community’s spiritual center—a green, artificial turf field marked with blue-and-yellow signage of the McNeese State Cowboys. And though it is not as gigantic as some others in this football country—its concrete bleachers hold about 17,600—the Hole’s significance to people here, dropped in the heart of Louisiana’s fifth-largest city, is dwarfed by only the neighborhood church.