ROUSES_SeptOct2019_Magazine

For LSU students, there was a level of prestige that came with living in the stadium dorms. Those who lived there quite obviously had a campus living experience that was unique relative to other students on other campuses across the country. And just as LSU football game day is a focal point of Baton Rouge society, so too is the stadium for those students who once called it home. Alumni brought that experience with them after they graduated, and the investment paid dividends by way of donations and goodwill. AFTER DORMS Dormitories weren’t the only Tiger Stadium innovation in the 1930s. If Tulane helped motivate LSU to build the stadium in the first place, scheduling conflicts with that school’s football games would be the primary driver for outdoor lighting. Nighttime sporting events were all but unheard of at the time, but LSU (following Loyola’s lead) erected towers of lights 50 feet high on the east and west sides of the stadium. The lights were designed specially to illuminate the field while remain- ing sufficiently diffuse so as not to annoy spectators. The mid ’30s also saw the installation of an electronic scoreboard, which was just about the height of sports technology at the time, allowing such information as time, quarter, lineups, penalties, ball position, downs and yardage to be posted for all to see. In 1936, with the completion of the dorm seating and the north side addition of “horseshoe” seating (and more dormitories yet, this time for 1,200 students), Tiger Stadium became the largest football

stadium in the South, able to seat 44,000 spectators. The Works Progress Administration, started by President Roosevelt to bring about an end to the Great Depression, kicked in 55% of the costs; LSU covered the remainder. Another Governor Long — Huey’s brother, Earl — later made “closing the horseshoe” a campaign issue. Again, dormitories featured prominently and formed the foundation of the 30,000-seat expansion. Across 50 years and ending in the late 1980s, hundreds of thousands of students lived in Tiger Stadium. As recently as the early 2000s, signage remained throughout the stadium indicating student housing within Death Valley, and over 500 windows still surrounding the stadium stand as a testament to the place where students worked hard — and played harder. THE DEATH VALLEY OF TOMORROW If the history of Tiger Stadium is one of relentless expansion, national trends suggest that its future is one of contraction. “Tiger Stadium is one of the unusual stadiums that expanded over time,” says Dr. Seifried. “If you look at the Pac-12 Conference, a lot of them are now shrinking their football facilities, changing their seating configurations to have fewer seats, but more amenities.” This includes things such as new concession stands and better restrooms to meet consumer de- mand. Dr. Seifried says that in the future, he wouldn’t be shocked to see the university do something with the north end zone, assuming engineers can overcome the problem of North Stadium Drive. (An

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SEPTEMBER•OCTOBER 2019