Tiger idols

Don’t boo. Please.

Those are kids out there.

I realized this truly and powerfully for the first time last year when I met Zach Mettenberger.

Arriving for a 225 photo shoot, the Georgia native strode into the locker room in the belly of Tiger Stadium, a flop of reddish-blond hair on top of nearly six-and-a-half feet of quarterback.

He was a few weeks shy of turning 21 at the time, and other than his quiet humor and an optimism for the season ahead that seemed to overflow like a Gatorade shower from a cooler overturned on a coach’s head, what struck me most about Mettenberger was how young he seemed. Not immature. Just young.

That feeling says more about me—now that I’m in my 30s—than it does LSU’s field captain, but even this age realization doesn’t change the fact that we get mighty worked up when something goes wrong for our Tigers.

Why?

Beyond the identity building and mental connections we make with our chosen athletic teams and the fellow fans that surround them, described well by Dr. Erich Duchmann in this month’s cover story, let me suggest a more sobering, introspective answer:

When we take a good thing like LSU football and turn it into an ultimate thing, we create an idol.

This idol building starts early. When I was young, I never thought I’d be as tall or grown-up as LSU players. They were huge. Infinite. The “good guys.” Heroes.

When we become adults, this continues, and we ride the emotional rollercoaster of each season for good or ill.

I’m not saying that, as a city, we need more or less rabid Tiger fans. I’m saying we need real Tiger fans. Fans with perspective. This month’s cover story features several. If Baton Rougeans, myself included, put LSU football into perspective, maybe a 10-2 season wouldn’t feel like a failure. Maybe we’d enjoy it all more.

But how can we enjoy it even more? you might ask. We bleed purple and gold!

LSU football will be more fulfilling when we’re not asking it to be the most fulfilling thing in our lives. When we stop expecting it to be the most powerful, purposeful thing in this city, it will, ironically, become more fulfilling in its role.

Every idol falls.

Remember, as much as we may identify with this team, it is not ?us out there sweating and bleeding and hurting.

It’s not us putting ourselves on the line every Saturday each fall.

I may not look up to LSU players anymore—Mettenberger and I are about eye-to-eye, literally—but they claim my praise, still, just for different reasons.

I admire them because even though they are no longer my idols, they are someone else’s, and they can’t help but know that.

Win or lose, they carry that weight—a weight I can imagine, but will never feel.

So don’t boo. If you’re booing a 20-year-old for his error in one of the toughest competitions on the planet, you’re not really angry because of the mistake; you’re booing him for how his mistake makes you feel, because you have placed your hope on that young man’s accomplishment for your own sense of purpose or self-worth.

By booing, what you’re doing is asking him to be more than a Tiger. And the child in me will tell you that it’s very wrong to ask anyone to be more than that.