McNeese's 2025 Football Schedule With intrastate Rivalry Game

It's a new year and a new regime for the McNeese Cowboys football team as they are starting the 2025 season with new players and a new head coach who is very familiar with the Poke Nation.

McNeese Football/CANVA

Coach Matt Viator was hired to come back to McNeese after coaching the Cowboys back in from 2006 to 20215 when he left to take the job at Louisiana Monroe. In his tenure with McNeese, he brought the Pokes to five playoff games and ten winning seasons with the program. Viator takes over for Gary Goff, who was relieved of his duties last season.

It's a new time for the football program and McNeese Athletics in general. We have seen the Men's basketball team rise nationally, while the men's and women's softball teams are making noise too.

Football is life here in Louisiana, and the bar for the football team is set high. And with coach Viator coming back, the expectations are high for the Pokes to rise back to glory and get back on the winning ways.

McNeese Football field New Turf (Photo provided by Matt Bonnette MSU)

It all gets started in August 2025 when the new season for the Cowboys football team gets underway. The Cowboys will have six home games in Lake Charles this season and eight if you count the intrastate rival game with the Ragin' Cajuns of Louisiana Lafayette and the game against the Lamar Cardinals in Beaumont, Texas. Tons of Cowboy fans will make the short drive to Lafayette or Beaumont to root the Pokes on to victory.