If you’re from Baton Rouge, you know: LSU football is more than a sport—it’s a culture
You have to experience it to believe it. Consider this:
When LSU plays a big-time Southeastern Conference opponent, like Alabama or Florida, not only does Tiger Stadium fill all of its 102,231 seats, but some estimates say there are more than 50,000 more who tailgate—many of whom stay for the game, watching outside the stadium.
That makes the LSU campus the fifth-largest city in the state on game nights.
You have to experience it in person: the wafting scents of different types of tailgating barbecue, from whole pigs to alligator to chicken to every kind of sausage you could imagine. Jambalaya, pastalaya, gumbos, boudin and boudin balls … you get the idea.
Need a beer? One can only imagine how many cans get consumed on an LSU home-game Saturday.
LSU football is our city’s version of the opera. When the fall schedule is announced each year, it causes a frenzy among an entire state as they plan ahead for open dates. Quick, reserve the church and reception venue for the
wedding. Announce the date for the big fundraiser. Plan that one weekend trip each fall that’s not for football.
And trips for football? You or a sports fan you know plans at least one big LSU football road trip each year, whether it was last year to Green Bay for the Tigers’ season opener against Wisconsin or just making the relatively short drive to Houston to see LSU play BYU in the 2017 season opener.
In my 2002 book Tales From the LSU Sidelines, former LSU sports information director Herb Vincent said, “It amazes me that there are so many people who don’t have a whole lot of money, yet who budget their whole year making sure they have enough for LSU football.”
You know kids—top-notch high school students who could get academic scholarships elsewhere—who choose to enroll at LSU because they don’t want to miss the football games.
But how about the perspective from an outsider?
My friend Bob Ryan, a noted Boston sportswriter and ESPN fixture, for years talked about coming to an LSU football game. Finally, in 2014, he and his wife, Elaine, came for the Alabama game. It was Nov. 14 and a Chamber of Commerce day. Bright sun, soft breeze and a hell of a game that Alabama won in overtime.
I hooked them up: great tickets and a promise for a pregame experience they’d never forget.
Before the game, I took Bob and Elaine around the stadium to about five of my friends’ tailgates. Understand, now, that the Ryans have traveled the world and have been to every kind of sporting event known to man.
At LSU that day, their minds were blown and their stomachs bloated.
“Coming from the Northeast, where there might be 100 cars doing tailgating with a sandwich and a can of beer, it was mind-boggling,” Elaine recalled. “The geographical extent of the tailgating, as well as how complicated it was and the kinds of food … it was amazing. And the people who came with their TVs and easy chairs to watch the game with no intention of going inside.”
She laughed.
“It was absolutely amazing. It was a social event over and above the game. It was fabulous.”
As we said, you have to experience it to believe it.
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This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.
