In my twelve day road trip from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to Lafayette to Lake Charles and back, nearly every gas station, market, restaurant, bar and grill pledged allegiance to the LSU Fighting Tigers. Caps, mugs, inflatable tigers, pennants, and t-shirts dangled from hooks, hung on walls, and surrounded cash registers.
While using the Internet connection in the Lafayette, Louisiana, Days Inn lounge I was startled to hear a whoop from the office around the corner. A moment later, Miss Sondra, the usually composed desk manager, apologized for the outburst when she realized I was present. It wasn’t embarrassment that flushed her face. The game was on the line against Georgia. If a sixty mile shout from Lafayette to Baton Rouge would help, Ms Sondra was gonna shout.
During lunch at Poor Boy Lloyd’s in Baton Rouge three days later, the three plasma TV screens played endless loops of the game’s final moments as Louisiana State University defeated Georgia 20-13.
The LSU campus in Baton Rouge
The Louisiana State University football stadium in Baton Rouge is on the scale of a Mayan Temple. Even considering the sprawl of the 650-acre, 250 building leafy campus on the banks of the Mississippi River, its footprint is monumental.Mike is a major attraction. He is the sixth tiger to reside here since 1936.
The only thing the fans left home was Mike VI, a two-year-old 300-pound Siberian-Bengal tiger who lives in mini-savannah captivity in the shadow of Tiger Stadium across the street. When full grown he’ll close in on 700 pounds. During this reporter’s trip to the campus, a continual stream of intergenerational admirers visited Mike.
Mike's penthouse across the street from Tiger Stadium
Speaking of streams, while two undergraduates and I were admiring him from one of the viewing arches that surround his compound, Mike turned his tail to us and puckered up a certain sphincter. An arch of fine golden droplets sparkled in the late afternoon sun and covered us with Mikey-ness. Perhaps this is Mike's way of inducting Yankees into the Tiger fold.
To quote an LSU web site, "Eight nights a year, Tiger Stadium becomes the fifth largest city in the state of Louisiana as over 92,000 fans pack the cathedral of college football to watch the Tigers play.” It is the sixth largest college stadium in the country.
Immense and meant to impress by sheer weight of concrete and steel, cathedral would be the appropriate term.
Since 2000, the Tigers have a record of 49-7 at home. Visiting teams think of Tiger Stadium as ‘Death Valley.” Tickets for Saturday’s game against Florida are being scalped for one grand apiece.
Most ticket holders would rather live on close rations for a week than give in to the temptation to sell.This Saturday, number 4 ranked LSU faces number 2 ranked Florida. It’s a safe bet that every one of the 21,000 undergraduates and tens of thousands of boosters will pack Tiger Stadium.
Game night at Tiger Stadium
One alumnus informed me that LSU has a reputation as the biggest college tailgate community in the country. Twenty thousand, with or without their tailgates in tow, traveled to the game against Washington in Seattle in September. Is the word fan derived from the word fanatic?Photos, except night shot of Tiger Stadiium above, by Paul Tamburello
I really enjoyed the insight.
Sounds like ya'll had a good time.
Posted by: Allyson | October 10, 2009 at 01:13 PM
The 'induction of Yankees" is a very funny picture! And I liked the ending too!
Posted by: Susaan | October 10, 2009 at 04:04 PM
Aw - they lost to the Gators! I would normally not watched ANY of it
on TV except for having read this and as I was surfing past, caught
the purple and gold!
Posted by: Susaan | October 16, 2009 at 10:43 PM