Scooter Hobbs: Will Tiger Stadium be ‘lit” this year?
It hasn’t gotten a lot of play so far, but LSU’s Tiger Stadium will celebrate its 100th anniversary this season.
It’s LSU, specifically athletics, so there will be ample and convenient opportunities for fans to donate their cash money as part of this birthday celebration.
There will, of course, be a centennial corporate sponsor for the festivities.
But, yes, Tiger Stadium was first used for the final game of the 1924 season, even though the rest of the campus had not been completed yet. The classrooms and whatnot were still located there in downtown Baton Rouge.
Even then the Ol’ War Skul had its priorities in order, as they first got the dadgum football stadium built on the newly purchased acreage and then let the rest of the campus follow football out there, which was still somewhat in the boondocks.
It held only 12,000 seats for its grand opening and LSU lost that first-ever game 13-0 to Tulane. There may have bee quite a traffic jam afterwards. But they kept it around anyway.
It’s come a long way since then, you might say.
Most of the various polls and rankings you see this time of year put Tiger Stadium as the “toughest place to play” or “best atmosphere,” etc, for college football.
It’s on a lot of bucket lists for a lot of fans who could care less about the Tigers.
So LSU has a lot of plans for this year’s anniversary, some of which don’t involve your pocketbook.
The grand history will culminate for the Ole Miss game on Oct. 12. Details to come, the school says.
But that date may have been picked at random. The whole season is planned as a celebration of 100 years of Tiger Stadium.
LSU wants it to look the part.
The joint can always use some touch-ups, and LSU is sprucing it up it for this historic season.
Most of it sounds pretty good.
There’s new and bigger video boards, the main one in the north end zone and for those dual displays in the corner of the opposite end, plus new sound speakers and more of those strip lights around the rim.
But also announced was something that should concern LSU fans.
The literature only identifies it as “new LED lights allowing for in-game light shows and other capabilities.”
Uh, oh.
If these “in-game light shows” eventually look like what it sounds like, I don’t like the, uh, sound of it all.
It’s all the rage these days, and not exactly a new development.
These things are spreading through the Southeastern Conference, possibly elsewhere, like illuminated locusts.
I was first introduced to them at the famed 2019 LSU-Alabama game in Bryant-Denny Stadium. That was the game that clinched the Heisman Trophy for Joe Burrow en route to the Tigers’ national championship.
By the time the break between third and fourth quarter came along, it was dark, and you really were wondering what else this game could spring on you.
It turned out to be LEDs and the light show from hell. I believe it was the Alabama debut for them. At any rate, they caught me off guard.
I’d call them laser lights, crimson (red) as I recall, and they were everywhere, dashing and darting about, bouncing off the entire stadium and swirling this way and that, way out into the night sky, all of it accentuated by an awful musical accompaniment.
It looked like a science fiction battle royale.
But all they did was turn venerable old Bryant-Denny Stadium into a 1970s disco. Only thing missing was the mirror ball.
You’d think those shows could trigger PTSD outbreaks.
I would have thought such a thing would have been beneath a program with the proud tradition of Alabama. It saddened me to watch it.
I hope what LSU has in mind isn’t similar. Tiger Stadium can be better. It should do better.
It has updated itself enough over the years to for the most part keep the entertainment value there, even with the short attention spans of today’s fans.
But most of the excitement, allure and atmosphere of LSU’s “Death Valley” has been created organically, just letting it happen.
It doesn’t need such laser foolishness any more that it needs “CLAP YOUR HANDS!!!” or “MAKE SOME NOISE!!!” pleas blinking from the video boards.
But it’s probably going to happen and, OK, maybe I’m overreacting.
It’s possible there were also grumpy old naysayers back in 1931 when somebody had the bright idea to add lights to Tiger Stadium — normal bulbs, dim ones at that — and play night games.
And I guess that turned out pretty well.