COLLEGE FOOTBALL : They’ve Got Spirits : LSU Football Is Big, and the Proof Is at Tiger Stadium

There may be tougher places for a team to go in and play football--a prison yard comes to mind--but there surely aren’t any stranger than 80-proof Tiger Stadium, home to LSU football, some students (they live in the stadium walls) and a genuine Bengal tiger.

It is home also to an assembly of fans, some 80,000 gathered out of the bayous, who are nearly as remarkable for the noise they produce as for the alcohol they consume.

This last is not a gratuitous aside. After USC had played here in 1979, a Trojan compared walking through the tunnel onto the field to being enveloped by “a giant breath of bourbon.” He meant to explain the apparent loss of fan inhibition throughout the game, why the home-field advantage is the most exaggerated in the country.

It’s a loud, scary, impossible place to play, no question, although opponents don’t like to admit it. Some Ohio State players, visiting for a game today, were talking tough this week, quarterback Tom Tupa saying, “Hey, we play at Wisconsin, Michigan . . . “ Hey, Tom. Wisconsin and Michigan are theme parks compared to this place.

Football in the South is a strange social convention to begin with. But football here, where the crowd can either drown out or simply freeze the opposition, really tests the limits of the game.

Part of it, they say, is the configuration of the stadium, which presses these crazy people right down on you; the noise is fierce and unremitting. And effective. Since the stadium was built in 1924, LSU has enjoyed a winning percentage of .720. Clemson may have the original “Death Valley,” but this is the real one.

Of course, Ohio State will be spared the worst. Because of TV demands, this game is being played in the afternoon. This reduces the amount of time allotted for tailgating by about six hours. And those are apparently crucial hours. With only the morning for these fans to eat and drink, LSU is 0-4-1. LSU fans apparently need an entire day to truly prepare themselves for college football.

Still, it is these crazy fans who make playing here a unique experience.

We say, from experience and testimony, that these fans eat and drink a little and have consequently had their internal controls loosened by game time. In truth, they probably have the same appetites as fans throughout the country, who haul their motor homes onto adjacent fields Saturday mornings, set up housekeeping and hoist Bloody Marys.

Only thing, these tailgaters traditionally have those extra six hours before game time. “Everybody is in pretty good spirits by the time they get into the stadium,” says longtime sportswriter Dan Hardesty.

Explained an LSU observer, putting it another way: “It’s a question of how many times they can get drunk, sober, drunk again before game time.”

This is a harsh characterization, and surely can’t be applied wholesale to the families who motor in on Friday nights--for a big game, they arrive as early as Wednesday--and set up one of the game’s most extensive tailgating communities. But drinking, face it, is about all that can explain some of the stranger fan reactions in Tiger Stadium.

There is, first of all, the UFO sighting in 1971. It turned out to be a weather balloon, appearing other-worldly in a refraction of swamp gas, or perhaps the fans’ own alcoholic vapors. Few fans cared for the science of it, however, and exited as quickly as their reduced motor skills would allow.

Then, too, John Ferguson, longtime voice of the LSU network, recalls the day he shook thunder out of the clear blue skies. “We set off these big boomers from across the street,” he remembers. “Late afternoon, not a cloud in the sky. Still, they were addled enough they thought it was thunder, and entire crowds scrambled for shelter. I thought, ‘What have we done?’ ”

Ferguson admitted that the all-day cocktailing “is, unfortunately, a big thing here. Sometimes, when the people leave the stadium and they turn out the lights on the east side, the glare from the whisky bottles left in the stands is blinding.”

He is quick to point out, however, that it is not the only thing special about the crowd.

“You have to understand how important LSU is to these fans,” he said. “These people come out of the bayous, out of the cities, come from hundreds of miles away, because this is really the focal point of the state. LSU football is an event, far bigger than the (New Orleans) Saints. It’s become a traditional thing for these people to gather and vent their emotions at one time. I’d hate to think what the state would be like if they didn’t.”

In fact, Tiger home games more and more take on the aspect of a statewide vacation, now that more and more can afford motor homes. Tailgating in the Traveling Tiger lot has become so important to the social life here that the game itself is almost incidental.

“Then, too, I think the fans’ heritage has a lot to do with it, how they handle their emotions,” added Ferguson, who broadcast games from 1946 to 1983. “They’re a fun-loving, free-wheeling type of person, and I think that has a lot to do with their French heritage. In north Louisiana, even, they are more reserved than these folks. They’re a different breed.”

These conditions conspire to make it difficult indeed on the visiting team.

“It’s a strange place,” agreed Ara Parseghian, who brought a Notre Dame team here in 1971. “The crowd is right on top of you, no track to buffer the noise. We knew what to expect, we had played in big, noisy stadiums. But there’s no crowd like this. They never stop, and it’s like one, continuous pep talk.”

Parseghian maintained, however, that the crowd doesn’t make it impossible to win here. “The crowd doesn’t make any tackles or block anybody,” the old coach reminded.

So, how’d it turn out, coach?

“We got our tails handed to us,” he said.

Hardesty, sports editor of the Baton Rouge States-Times for nearly 40 years, said the stadium really got its reputation for intimidation in the late 1950s, when Mississippi suddenly lost the ability to win there.

“Ole Miss would come in and, for some reason, just freeze up when the crowd noise started,” he said. “I think it was in 1961, they had a terrific team, ranked second and LSU was third. They thought they were finally going to win here. But when they came out onto the field it seemed their eyes were glazed. They were in a state of shock.”

Ole Miss lost again.

Well, why wouldn’t their eyes have been glazed. Like USC in 1979, Ole Miss probably came in Friday night to work out at the stadium and, like USC, was greeted by hundreds of kids shouting, “Tiger Bait.”

When USC walked from the bus to the stadium, a strikebreaking atmosphere prevailed. All that was missing were 2 X 4s and a gantlet. Several hundred fans remained to watch a “closed” workout, giving the Trojans, who won that game in a wild finish, a pregame taste.

Then, too, how settled would your nerves be if you had to suit up in a room next to a 500-pound Bengal, who might loose a roar from time to time. He’s actually put next to the visiting team’s dressing room before game time, believe it.

About this Bengal: It’s not your ordinary papier-mache mascot. This guy--Mike IV, part of a 51-year tradition of big cats--would have some fun with that stupid Notre Dame leprechaun, put it that way. He’d drag Traveler down from behind just for the fun of it. And the fans would toast him for it.

Mike, who lives in a nice zoo-like cage 50 yards from the stadium and is cared for by the veterinary school, makes a mockery of those schools that dress up students in big-cat heads. Make a snack of them. The cheerleaders roll him around the field--in a cage, of course--before the game and, if they’re lucky, get an amplified roar out of him.

“In the old days, a cheerleader would stick him with a broom, get him to roar,” Hardesty said. “Although, with the first one, you never had to do much. He was kind of mean.”

It probably doesn’t inspire confidence to learn that Mike IV got loose once. Not during a game, or the name Death Valley might have real meaning. But the night before a game, some Tulane students, it is believed, opened his cage and let him out. He was soon located on a nearby track, presumably looking for a stray gazelle, and taken down with a tranquilizing gun.

The next day, his trainer discovered some small pines nearby that had been snapped in two. He was half-horrified that, if he looked further, he might find an empty pair of shoes somewhere. He didn’t.

“They can’t play the game without him,” Ferguson said. “When the first one died, people were destroyed. Held ceremonies all day long. He’s stuffed now, in a museum.”

That tells you something, too.

Today, Ohio State will not enjoy the full experience. “Day games are not what this is about,” Hardesty said.

The crowd will not be fully lubricated or fed, the swamp gas will not be properly illuminated, and Mike IV might not be in a feeding frenzy. Still, with 80,000 people, all eager for a good time, there could be a small share of excitement.

It could, it’s possible, even rank with that USC game, which Ferguson considers the record-holder for sheer noise.

“It seemed to me there were 80,000 people, practically joined by hand, in a frenzy not for either team, but for the occasion,” he said. “They were cheering the event and they didn’t stop for three hours.”

Ferguson paused to consider the prospects. “Oh, we’ll have a stud of a time.”

As he said so, the motor homes were lumbering into place in the Traveling Tiger lot.