Tiger Stadium

This Friday we'll be hauling the RV out to my Alma mater- L-S-U!  Anyone can pick a team to cheer for but when you cheer for your Alma mater, the word fan takes on a whole new meaning.  This team, this school, this campus encompassed every daily memory of my life for almost 5 years.  LSU is literally woven into the fibers of my being.  How do I know this?  Chill bumps...when the band takes the field at the first home game of the year and 92,000 fans, decked out in purple and gold, fall silent; a cool breeze blows through Death Valley bringing with it the smells of football in the South and the first Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba sounds out and the crowd goes insane...I get chill bumps.  There is no such thing as an LSU alumni who is a fair-weather fan, they don't exist.  No matter how many wins or how many losses we stick by our team...and we fire the coach. :) No matter how far from Tiger Stadium we stray, purple and gold are our true colors.

It starts when we're little the first colors we learn are LSU Purple and Tiger Gold.  We hear stories about Tommy Hodson and The Earthquake Game, the last second touchdown by Bert Jones to beat Ole Miss, or the Billy Cannon touchdown run on Halloween night...and we hope and pray that one Saturday night we'll be lucky enough to be there for an amazing play that will go down in history books.  I was just that lucky once:  November 4th, 2000 LSU beat Alabama in Tiger Stadium for the first time in 31 years, the fans charged the field and the goal posts came down.  I still have the patch of grass I pulled up from the end-zone.  Oh yeah, this is where magic happens, where dreams become reality, and grow men just might cry.  

This is SEC football!

"It makes a body tingle. These folks go berserk when the band marches on the field. A huge roar is heard for the invocation, for heaven's sake.  And when the Tigers win the toss...there are tears of ecstasy." -- Douglas Looney, Sports Illustrated describing a Saturday night in Death Valley.

"Baton Rouge happens to be the worst place in the world to be a visiting team.  It's like playing inside of a drum."
-- The Late Paul "Bear" Bryant, head coach of Kentucky, Texas A&M and Alabama.  

"I stood in Tiger Stadium and I thought, 'This is what the Colosseum in Rome must have been like."
-- Ed Simonini, Texas A&M linebacker.
  

Some of our favorite LSU memories:

 

  

Geaux Tigers!