Rival this
The holidays are approaching, but it’s no time to relax for the Tigers. This month LSU faces a trio of bitter rivals for the team’s toughest stretch of the season. It starts with a road game versus #1 Alabama on Nov. 9, then Heisman winner Johnny Manziel and his Aggies of Texas A&M arrive on Nov. 23, before LSU ends its regular season in Tiger Stadium against the always-competitive Arkansas Razorbacks the day after Thanksgiving.
This is 225‘s final installment of Tiger Pride for the year, but we still want to see your game-day photos, so tag your images #225gameday. Take a look at some of our favorite fan photos.
One of the nation’s largest producers of collegiate footballs has purple and gold roots. Big Game USA, founded by Baton Rouge native and LSU grad Chris Calandro, manufactures game balls for 85 Division I teams, including the Tigers.
“We don’t make the same ball 10,000 times,” says Calandro, whose company also manufactures commemorative balls for the NFL. “We like to customize a ball that the players and coaches want.”
Big Game can create roughly 120 different varieties, using various combinations of leather, laces and patterns, often tailoring the specs to a starting quarterback’s hand.
“I just love college football, and this is the closest I can come to playing it,” Calandro says. “Growing up LSU was larger than life, and it still is.” biggameusa.com
Despite their ironic nickname, the nearly 100 fans known as the Tiger Pimp Nation take themselves seriously as ambassadors of fun and very unofficial representatives of LSU outside of Baton Rouge. The tailgate group is a dues-paying organization with a set of Masonic-like rites and rituals. New members, called Popcorn Pimps, do all the grunt work. The group has kept a lower profile after YouTube exposure “killed the mystique,” co-founder Poppa P says, but he did put his party on pause long enough to share these tailgate tips with 225.
–Sydney Blanchard
1. Soundtrack: Snoop Dogg (or more currently, Snoop Lion) always gets the party started.
2. Grub: It’s often an afterthought, Poppa P says. Anything you can eat with one hand is best for tailgating.
3. Fighting: Don’t do it. No quarrel is worth a fight or beat-down pre- or post-game. Even if it’s a Bama fan.
11
Number of times an LSU quarterback had thrown four touchdowns in a single game before Zach Mettenberger broke that record with five TD passes against UAB this season.
