Two big SEC West rivals met in Baton Rouge last night. Alabama vs LSU. This is always a big conflict to me, my home state (LSU) vs my newly-adopted home state (Alabama). If you’ve never been to a game at Tiger Stadium (especially on Saturday night, when everyone’s had all day to “prepare” for the festivities), well you haven’t lived. Baton Rouge is a notoriously hard place to play, with noise levels off the charts, and it lived up to its reputation last night. And a big reputation for evil fans, as well – (although I doubt they put up with a lot of this now). They don’t call if “Death Valley” for nothing. (I got really tickled when we drove by Clemson (who calls itself “The REAL Death Valley”) – it’s out in the middle of nowhere, like in a field. “Death Pasture”, maybe.
One of my memories of a long-ago LSU/Ole Miss game was some LSU fans chunking liquor bottles at the Ole Miss band, just like Ernest T. Bass.
My family and I went to several games when I was a young child, and it was quite an experience. Strange & magical things can happen at Tiger Stadium, especially at night. To my 6-year-old self, it seemed like visiting a big loony-bin. One particular case: 2 men were seated in front of us, with one of their wives/girlfriends between them. One fellow accidentally jostled the other one (both were “3 sheets to the wind”), and some jawing occurred. It would have been ok (both were too drunk to want to fight) if the female had not started egging her fellow on: “You’re not going to let him get away with that, are ya?”
When one took a swing at the other one, he missed, and hit the trouble-making female instead. Justice was served, I guess. I had never seen anything like this in my young life!
They can be pretty hard on their coaches, too. I remember seeing Coach Charlie McClendon being hung in effigy with signs saying “Help Mac Pack” He was one of their most successful coaches ever, but had a slight problem beating that guy in Alabama, Bear Bryant, so that got a lot of people mad at him. Didn’t seem to matter that lots of coaches had that same problem.
And then there’s the Alabama/Nick Saban hatred. Saban coached at LSU, taking them to a national championship. He then left to try his luck in the NFL. This was strike one: LSU breaks up with YOU, you don’t break up with THEM. He returned to the SEC in 2007 – but as the head coach of the hated rival, the Alabama Crimson Tide. This was strikes two, three -> infinity. It was 15 years ago, and LSU fans are STILL mad about it! (Sort of like my grandmother was always still mad about the Civil War, when I was very young, I thought the Civil War had happened last year, the way she talked about it.)
One of the best memories of my dad and my son: my dad got tickets to an LSU/Florida game years ago, when the top-ranked and defending national champion Florida Gators came to Baton Rouge, and took my son. Dad got to take my son down to the LSU sidelines, and miracle upon miracles, LSU upset Florida.
To say the crowd went wild was a complete understatement. (BTW, the guy who ended up on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Tommy Banks, was from my hometown.) My son called me later that evening with several sentences that started with “And then the police came, and….”
Last night, LSU won, congratulations to them. I saw pictures of the grandson of one of my cousins, taken at the game – from the look on his face, he has some memories he won’t ever forget, either.
