As rough of a season as 2020 has been for LSU, we were still looking forward to Bama week.
It’s the one game of the season that—for the most part—throws records out the window. Even in years where LSU has been struggling, the team typically finds a way to give Alabama a run for its money.
But 2020 couldn’t even give us that. The game has officially been postponed “due to a combination of positive tests, contact tracing and subsequent quarantining of individuals” within both programs.
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Now of course, player safety comes first and foremost. It’s a tall task to not only keep a group of hundreds of players, coaches, assistants, trainers, staff members, etc., all safe from the pandemic, but it’s even tougher when the vast majority of those are college kids living on campus among dozens of their closest friends and away from their families.
That’s where Shelley Mullenix steps in.
The LSU senior associate athletic director for health and wellness is OK with being called “Mama” by the team.
“‘Mama’ is one of my nicknames,” she says. “It’s gone from ‘Girlfriend,’ when I got here at age 28, to ‘Aunt’ to ‘Mama.’ And then probably a year ago I got my first ‘Grandma.’ And I stopped that right [away].”
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With no game to recap, minimal hard news to dissect and no upcoming game to preview, we decided to take a week off from the Tiger Pride Podcast and showcase some of the behind-the-scenes heroes of the Athletic Department, like Mullenix.
We featured her in our special Tiger Pride LSU section in August, as she told us how she and her staff navigate through a global pandemic on a college campus. Read the full story from the August 2020 issue online.
Don’t worry, the podcast will be back in full swing next week, games or no games. Be sure you don’t miss an episode by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. We welcome all your interactions on 225‘s social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, or follow Mark and Jerit on Twitter for any questions you might have.