ROUSES_SeptOct2019_Magazine

the long history of tiger stadium by david w. brown

Tiger Stadium used to be a college dorm. That’s a pretty sweet piece of trivia, but the story behind the greatest dormitory in the history of higher learning — and the effect it had on college football across the country — is even more interesting than that. To learn more about the history of Death Valley, I reached out to Chad Seifried, a professor of kinesiology and sports management at Louisiana State University. He says that the story, growth and evolution of Tiger Stadium reflect the city that calls it home.

“The stadium sets up a convenient meeting place for various social groups who can come together, interact with each other, celebrate and engage in conversation,” says Dr. Seifried. “Over time, it has become a bigger and bigger building. It represents a growing community, a growing state, a more modern state, if you will.” The stadium first opened in 1924.

in the United States. The idea was to build an arena to represent the institution, which would in turn work as a sort of advertisement, building institutional brand awareness and attracting alumni dollars. A stadium would recruit donors not just for the football facility, but for other campus buildings and student service programs — scholarships, foundations, fellowships and the like. It was

season until 1920, and even then, there were no championship games or nationally televised events (or national television at all, for that matter). And while the Midwest and northeastern United States cultivated what would become the National Football League, the South, by and large, was late to that party. Professional teams didn’t arrive here until the 1960s, which is why

Before then, the Tigers played football at State Field in Downtown Baton Rouge, where LSU had a campus. Though today Tiger Stadium holds 102,321 people — that’s about 25,000 more people than the Superdome can hold — it wasn’t always that big. Not even close. When first built, Tiger Stadium held a whopping 12,000 people. (For comparison, that’s barely twice more than my high school football stadium. Go Spartans!) At the time, LSU wasn’t trying to dominate football in the Southeastern Conference (mostly because the SEC didn’t yet exist). Rather, the

the region’s college football culture remains so dominant in sports today. Culturally, the Saints — even having won a Super Bowl (and having recently had an NFC championship stolen from them) — still command only a fraction of the eyeballs and emotion on game day that LSU attracts. This isn’t a reflection on the New Orleans team; it’s just that college ball has had an extra 50 years to cultivate personal investment, familial bonds and generational solidarity. And tailgating is just as important an aspect of an LSU football game as the game itself. The tens of thousands of tailgaters are

LSU Coach Moore and Governor Huey Long; photo: LSU University Archives Photographs Collection

school was trying to compete with Tulane, which was the dominant football team in the state then. There is a misconception out there that LSU spends all of its money on Tiger Stadium. In fact, tickets and private donors foot those bills, and football has historically infused the wider university with cash. (The failure of the state to support higher education is a different issue, of course.) The alumni model of football fundraising was pioneered by Harvard University in 1903, when it built the first proper stadium

always bigger than football: A permanent stadium meant a university was legitimate and would be around forever, a sort of Rome in miniature. The idea worked, and within 20 years, the Harvard model had spread to nine New England universities. By the end of the 1920s, there were 49 schools in the U.S. with permanent football stadiums. For context, it’s important to remember that in those days, college football was king, and professional football was essentially nonexistent. The NFL wouldn’t play its first

as important, in many ways, as the players themselves. The two events are inseparable.

ABOUT THOSE DORMS The blessed union of dormitory and stadium came about because of money: Student housing had it, and college football didn’t. In 1928, Huey Long was elected governor of Louisiana, and LSU was part of his plan to build a legacy. He wanted the university to have a world-class medical school, new and renovated buildings, a new baseball field and an improvement to the football field. He

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SEPTEMBER•OCTOBER 2019